[pksebben]

This might be a little broad for most, but I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired. Who cares? We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

I'm saying this as someone who enlisted in the defense of said nations once. Most of the structures that make up a country these days are for the birds - let a guy hike for chrissake. I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense. We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

[godsinhisheaven]

The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, and I don't see it petering out anytime soon. Plenty of people care, for all sorts of reasons, many of which I would say, are good!

[chimeracoder]

> The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history,

Quite the opposite. The modern concept of "border sovereignty" as intertwined with the nation-state is a Westphalian construction. (Students of world history will recognize why this timing is not a coincidence). And even then, they didn't exactly catch on immediately.

Sovereign nation-states are a tiny piece of human history. They're not even the majority of recorded human history.

[tomrod]

What, your ancestors between 600k years ago up to 150 years ago are a joke to you? Human history began with European Great Powers?

Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.

[crazygringo]

Not really. Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation, and neighboring tribes understanding which area was whose. Even nomadic tribes would be nomadic within a certain area, and jealously protect the area they would go to at the start of every spring, for example.

Even modern primates establish territories for their groups, and warn off and fight other primates attempting to encroach. So this general behavior is quite natural. The concept of open borders where anyone can just waltz in and live somewhere where they're not from or didn't marry into and haven't been invited -- that's actually the relatively newer idea, historically speaking.

I'm not arguing for more closed borders today, but I don't think we're should pretend that the historical human condition has somehow been "open".

[nullstyle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything Disagrees with you, and has several examples of tribal fluidity and more freedom of movement than you imply here.

[crazygringo]

If you're talking about "the freedom to escape one's surroundings and move away", the book has been widely criticized for that assertion, as Graeber is extremely ideologically motivated.

If you left your tribe without being accepted into another (whether through marriage or some kinds of previous personal alliances you'd made), life would be pretty rough if you survived at all.

Sure tribes would split sometimes when they got too big or disagreements split them. But that's not about the individual level. That's akin to nation-state secession today.

There's no evidence that people were just regularly packing things up and going off and joining whatever neighboring tribe they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. And this is the type of thing where the book has come under such heavy criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodo...

[nullstyle]

Been awhile since I've listened to the book (all cards on the table), so I can't be specific. Nor am I an expert in anyway. My takeaway is that the pre-historical Americas had many diverse ways of organizing people that doesn't quite match up to the implied-risk-game of territory that I was responding too.

In starting to read through some of the criticism's of the book just now, I was reminded of the seasonal hunting parties where many smaller groups would band together for better kills. That's what I mean with "tribal fluidity".

And by freedom of movement, the impression that I had coming away from the listen was that there were many ways in which someone could find themselves in a role where the could migrate through several communities and still live. looking at things again presently, I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_tradition, which I think illustrates what I was trying to convey. "Border sovereignty" doesn't make much sense to me as a concept in that world... i think things were much more fluid. There weren't border checkpoints throughout prehistory.

[tomrod]

No, really. You could make a city be defended but there was no great way to make a nation state before gunpowder without natural barriers in place.

Further, trade goods are found over large distances, which doesn't work over large distances and many alleged single-tribe-lands unless the good is extremely valuable and defensible from theft.

Your claim that great powers style organization is specifically refuted.

[crazygringo]

Who said anything about nation-states or "great powers organization"? You're changing the subject entirely.

The original comment was about nationalism and borders, not nation-states and great powers.

I explained that the same concepts are found at the tribal level and even in primates. To occupy and defend your territory, and territory is defined by borders, even if they're just a river or the edge of a forest. And gunpowder has nothing to do with anything.

And I don't have the slightest idea what you're trying to say with trade goods.

So no, nothing I said is refuted. It would be helpful if you stuck to the subject at hand, however, without going off track entirely to modern nation-states. Nations are not the same thing as nation-states.

[guywithahat]

It's not just a human thing; people who study wolves find they maintain surprisingly strict borders between different packs, and this behavior continues though a lot of other mammals and even some smaller animals like certain birds and insects.

[pksebben]

That's partially true; the bit about borders and human history (so long as you sequester 'history' to 'recorded history') - but nationalism is actually newer than you'd think, and there were human societies for thousands of years before there were borders. More recent if you go by the current definition of border (formalized, surveyed borders are also relatively modern).

Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us.

But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.

[bluebarbet]

Yes, hard borders are far more recent than people think. As late as the First World War you could travel the world without so much as a passport.

But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.

[jandrewrogers]

You could travel across the North American countries without a passport until quite recently. That only stopped being a thing after 9/11.

[alva]

Passport equivalents go back to 1350BC

[BeFlatXIII]

What are those reasons?

[bluebarbet]

The most obvious one is that the modern welfare state relies for its legitimacy on social cohesion, i.e. a certain base of shared values and identity. You will not get people to consent to heavy taxation and redistribution if they feel that their society is full of foreigners. This observation is perhaps more relevant to Europe than the USA.

[SauntSolaire]

And that's before mentioning the economics of funding a welfare state with a relatively static/shrinking tax base and growing, imported, welfare recipient class - the latter being practically unbounded in the case of illegal immigration.

[phantasmish]

The US (where “open borders” are often characterized as national “suicide” by right-wing figures) had open borders well within living memory.

By ship? No. But you’re from Argentina and made it all the way up to the Rio and want to cross to work on US farms or whatever? Yeah whatever man, totally fine, just walk in. Anyone from the Americas was welcome, no waiting, no la migra hunting them, no nothin’

We didn’t change that until the ‘60s, and the only reason it didn’t cause a ton of problems immediately (farms at that time were already heavily dependent on migrant labor operating a bit under the table, and their lobbies were not quiet on the issue) was that enforcement was and has been, at times (and especially at first) mostly rather half-assed.

[marcusverus]

> Who cares?

The vast majority of people care.

> We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

Reasoning from pre-agrarian living patterns is, quite frankly, hippy nonsense. And no, we didn't settle in cities because of "the designs of the empowered few", but because agriculture leads to more permanent, prosperous settlements, which attract raiders, and settling close together allowed for common defense. In other words, as soon as people earned a living by their own planning and sustained effort, (as opposed to merely collecting the bounty of the earth) they settled down and drew borders to protect what they had built from people who wanted to just show up and reap the rewards of their effort, at their expense!

> I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense.

We can't have borders because you could see Tijuana from your back yard?

> We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

[cthalupa]

> Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

Fundamentally, everything in your post down to this ending boils down to whether or not you think that immigrants coming into the country is a good thing or not. People will try to split hairs over "doing it the right way," when until the 1900s doing it the right way was basically just having enough financial stability to make it here - many states had nothing beyond 'means testing' that would easily be passed if you could afford to make it to America rather than stowing away, and many states had less than that. For most of American history, immigrating properly was literally just showing up.

For the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants, the only difference between them and the legal immigrant is the amount of paperwork on file. And many of us arguing that that paperwork matters are beneficiaries of a time where that paperwork wasn't necessary.

It's very explicitly a case of "Fuck you, got mine."

[marcusverus]

You can be butthurt all you want, we don't owe foreigners access to our country.

[cthalupa]

If the people in the country had that sort of mentality when your ancestors came here, there's a decent chance you wouldn't be here.

[pksebben]

You know, ideological differences aside, there are some brass-tacks reasons that this particular brand of rhetoric does you no good, and actually hurts you.

Bought groceries lately? Kind of expensive, no? A significant portion of that is due to the central valley labor shortage. Which is a direct result of ICE enforcement. Same goes for price increases in restaurants across the country. Those increases in prices at the grocery store also translate to inflationary pressure across the board. People have to spend more to eat, so they demand bigger salaries, so their companies raise prices. Not rocket science.

Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here? Are you directly benefitting from this or is it just a balm for some vague jingoist need to feel superior? I'm genuinely curious. The common arguments like 'they're importing rapists' is... well I don't even know where to start with that one it's just preposterous and demonstrably false. Immigrants aren't taking your job, are they? Like what is it?

[marcusverus]

Deportations aren't causing the cost of food to rise:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL

> Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here?

I want to leave my country to my children and theirs. Whatever America would be after the endless waves of third world immigrants (most of whom are grasping collectivists who value none of the things that have made America worth preserving, and would happily neuter the bill of rights and tax every dollar out of my pocket) it would not be my country. Bored cat ladies and wishcasting liberals are apparently happy to roll the dice with the futures of our children on the line, but I'm not. Let Canada or the UK or whoever carry the experiment to its conclusion, and if it works, then by golly let's jump in with both feet. But a blind gamble? Hard pass.

Perhaps it would be different if I thought we had good faith partners on the other side, but I don't. Biden tried to bum-rush millions of illegals into the country with the full stated intent to amnesty them, enfranchise them, and use them to control the congress, admit new states (DC/PR), and cement permanent demographic-guaranteed progressive/collectivist majority. The democrats attempted most of these steps during his tenure, but were 1 vote short in the senate.

I was hesitant to even support deportations before the Biden regime jumped the shark. (Remember when they said we needed to pass a new law to "seal" the border--and explicit lie--when the law actually codified mass, unvetted illegal immigration at ~10X historical levels? I doubt it.) Knowing now that the left (the leadership, if not the rank and file) clearly intended to weaponize demographic change for their political benefit, of course I oppose them.

[cthalupa]

Again, the entire commentary you have here is all more FYGM.

If the Native Americans had this attitude (and Europe didn't just go to war) we wouldn't be here at all. If earlier European-descendant Americans had this attitude, a huge chunk of us wouldn't be here.

People said all of the same things here that you're saying about Irish, Italian, Chinese, and many other immigrant classes over the years. None of your rhetoric is new or unique.

[pksebben]

if you look at that chart, there's a price spike between jan-march of '25, precisely when ICE started cracking down in CA.

Biden also famously did not do what you are saying he did. He continued the work on the border wall, much to the chagrin of everyone who sees immigration differently than you do. The idea that immigration was "10x historical levels" is not backed up by the data - see, I found a chart too [0]. True that we now have a greater percent of the population than any time in history [1] - around 16%. If that's "they're taking over the country" then I'd say you're just being dramatic. Since it also looks like we're talking about legal immigrants here, let's take a look at what they provide because you did mention taxes.

So we've already identified that 16% of our population is immigrants, more than ever before, sure. In 2023 we made about $2.2T from individual income taxes [2]. Of that, immigrants paid $651B [3]. So despite being 16% of the population, they paid nearly 30% of our total individual tax revenue. I'd say that's a pretty good deal!

0 -https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi...

2 - https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59730

3 - https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/nationa...

[nephihaha]

"I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired."

Well, it looks we'll have some kind of global government within a couple of decades. It won't be better than what we have now, in fact it will be even less accountable.