There are border crossings that are legal because they follow a protocol:
- holidays
- work visa
- Naturalisation procedure
- Seeking asylum
= legal
Border crossing that does not follow a protocol:
- Clandestine border crossing
- Fictitious reasons for crossing the border
- No identity papers
= illegal
Asylum seekers who commit criminal offences in the country that receives them are breaking the law of the receiving country and must leave the country.
The only sensible approach is that immigration, if it is not to cause stress, should be slow and moderate (i.e. follow protocols). If it doesn't, if you let a lot of foreigners - millions of them - into the country in a very short space of time, you end up in a crisis. People inevitably take an agitated stance and it usually divides the society of the host country.
So, the critical points here are
- time
- number
If a government is incapable of handling that, it is an incompetent one and should be replaced.
Why is the existence of a government protocol important? I know you say you think there is a need for restrictions, but what supports that assertion aside from your opinion?
Legality alone does not define morality. Saying something is wrong simply because some politicians said it was illegal is not a rational argument. Appealing tot he power of a government to enforce arbitrary edicts is not a rational measure of governmental legitimacy.
I don't mean to stereotype, but your arguments are very Germanic in their circular the law is the law and we must obey it because it is the law cycle, but I may be misunderstanding you.
Without a national government formulating a protocol and deploying executive personnel on your behalf, you have to go to your national border yourself and keep an eye on who enters your country and why, wouldn't you? Question would be: on what protocol?
If you don't want to do that because you don't want to work as a border guard or civil servant, but would rather do something else with your life, then you have to agree to a protocol and a border staff deputising for you that subjects the border to your living space to an order that does not stress capacity and social reasonableness. This staff must be trained and paid. Since this executive personnel is state-run, it is therefore subordinate to the government.
Unless you don't want a national border at all. In that case, however, you have to accept that you are thrown back on your immediate surroundings (house/apartment) and thus on your own skin.
This is because your immediate and wider surroundings can then be entered arbitrarily by anyone and you cannot automatically assume the exclusive goodwill of all people. The same would happen if you had no government. Your world would then be reduced to a much smaller space, as you would have to start joining forces with the people you know in your neighbourhood, i.e. form a kind of citizen militia. But you wouldn't know whether the citizen militia fifty kilometres away from you would follow the same rule, etc.
Your statements include so many assumptions.
Why do we worry about national border in the first place, and why do they need to be guarded in the first place? They are not analogous to private property lines. Why does my rejection of your initial assertion lead to justification for a national border enforcement system? It does not follow.
I am a philosophical anarchist because I reject these presumptions behind national so ereignty and political authority. They do not withstand scrutiny. Why do you assume the goodwill and virtue of the political class? Government now invades our lives, liberty, and property while its centralized power draws the corrupt like moths to a flame. An expropriating property protector is self-contradiction. I trust strangers more than I trust bureaucrats.
Just look at Ukraine and Russia. Those government borders engendered a needless conflict, and the political squabbles of the governments have led to untold destruction and death. People use the term "anarchy" as a bogeyman, but apologists for government are the ones with the burden of proof to justify bloodshed and chaos.
Why do you lock the door to your home and not leave it open?
Why do you call the police when someone breaks into your home or tries to rob you personally? And if you don't or wouldn't do that, can you expect the same attitude from those around you that you say is yours?
Let me ask again: Would you fully accept that you are thrown back on your immediate surroundings and thus on your own skin? Without relying on an existing border with its law and order, you'd have no other chance, is that correct?
Where would you draw the line, one mile, ten miles, fifty miles away from you? Or to the street you live? Or around the place you work? Where?
An order exists already but your former government did not execute it properly. That created such agitation to the other half of the population (to use a simple number) that it now is on drastic mode. But why is it on drastic mode? Does it come out of nowhere? Is there a reasonable explanation, you can give? Since you seem not to have accepted mine in pointing towards "time" and "numbers".
National borders are not analogous to property lines, house walls, or my front door.
I have a gun. If someone breaks in, we call 811 before we dig, not 911 for the cops. But seriously, citing a government-monopolized security service does not legitimize government any more than a government shoe monopoly would legitimize the state because people need to protect their feet.
Society arose before governments as we know them, and functions day-to-day in spite of government, not because of it. Governments routinely violate the laws and principles you claim we need them to enforce, and operates under standards we would not accept from our neighbors. Government is fundamentally a territorial monopoly in violence, or in other words, a mafia.
Order exists from the grassroots up, not from government down. Government plunders the productive economy, spreads a portion of their takings on enough shoddy monopolized services to buy popular support, and then borrow using us as collateral while enriching the politically-connected. This ever-growing cancerous monopoly of coercive power creates agitation as people play-tug-of-war in an effort to control it, engendering the escalating cycle of agitation, hate, and fear we see in modern domestic politics. The political class also diverts our attention abroad by blaming foreign powers, immigrants, and other outsiders as scapegoats. This is the real outcome of government power and border disputes.
I agree with the filth and the miseries caused through what you see as government. Only, I would call it "non government". It's not because the political elite is corrupt that one doesn't need a government, but precisely because it is corrupt that one needs one.
It is also the case that a government is needed, when there isn't actually one in office. Instead of working as it should, words and texts are being produced. Instead of leaving physical public structures such as water, fire and soil management to the experts in the field and on the water, one pretends that there is no physical matter. Instead of protecting people and material things - through a sensible budgetary effort - terms and buzzwords are protected. This is not real work, it is the simulation of activity. This is "non-government", but not "government".
If the world was not so interconnected and countries not so dependent on each other, nation states would not exist and a national government would not be necessary because people would not be travelling by plane and mass transport.
But since they do, and since goods are transported by air and water and railways in masses, and since goods reach the world market as a result, you can't just say that you don't need a national government. Someone will want to discuss the issue of importing and exporting large quantities of gas, oil and other commodities with you and will want to contractually negotiate the quantities for your nation, as well as international construction projects like pipelines. You'd want these nations to make a safe deal which lasts decades, and not until the next non-governor comes along.
If you leave it all to the ‘free market’, no one will stop an oligarch or a conglomerate from sinking their shark teeth into your country.
They tried it with Russia when the Soviet Union ended. Putin prevented that. Trump tries the same, but has a much harder job and maybe he lacks the skills and intelligence.
Unless you have no substitutes which gives the single individual the same quality and quantity of energy and electricity you need, you are dependent on having gas, oil and other essentials coming from foreign countries. In a modern world, you cannot isolate yourself, you need partners on the international level. Just for the sake of the big ones I mentioned, and I would like to add uranium as well, since atomic power plants need them to run.
Unless, you want go back and de-industrialize, do not drive a car, do not heat, do not cool and start living as a farmer or something less, you need a strong government which is able to reign and is not so paranoid to see enemies all over the world. But which is not so naive to see friends everywhere.
What exactly do you mean when you say "government?" There are many structures within society whereby we govern ourselves and form mutual agreements with others. When I specifically use the word "government," I mean a group of people who claim a territorial monopoly in violence. This usurped power can only draw the corrupt and corrupt those who intend virtue. Corruption isn't a bug, it's a feature.
The megacorporations people use as bogeymen of capitalism exist because they are intertwined with government. Incorporation is a legal process for protection in government courts. They lobby government for subsidies, protectionist regulations, bailouts, sweetheart contracts, and ever other anti-market intervention people say stems from free markets.
It does not follow that trade necessitates governments. It's also historically inaccurate. Merchants developed their own codes and courts because national laws don't work for free trade. They obstruct and interfere and turn innocent people into criminals. However, governments usurped many of these mechanisms in order to legitimize their interventionist policies and enrich their cronies while proclaiming they were somehow protecting us in the process.
Nationalism is isolationist. markets are global. It is the web of market prices and exchanges which made possible the automotive industry, computers, trade, and the rest of the modern world you credit government in your correlation/causation error. Strong government mean bad laws and worse wars. Police states and prohibition are anti-market, anti-individual, and anti-liberty. Arbitrary government borders are an obstacle to peace, progress, and prosperity.
As I said before, if you let in too many people in too short a period of time, you agitate the settled society and divide the people. Is that a fact or not?
I find the argument that no government is better because we see highly corrupt governments illogical.
You might as well say that your car doesn't need windows because the windows it has installed are very shitty, if you know what I mean.
There is still a need for windows, is it not? But for functioning ones.
In the same way, I see a need for a government. The old parties must be replaced by a new government, which calms down the stresses of the people inside a country. But since the US and western Europe are so messed up (we would probably agree upon the reasons), these times do not come smoothly but first will increase the multiple stresses that had been caused within decades, before a calm down can even take place.
A lot of californians moving to the Pacific Northwest has been disruptive. This does not justify interstate immigration restrictions.
A welfare state , government monopoly schools, and centralized healthcare systems struggle under the burden of poor immigrants, but by the same logic then, we should be able to forbid the poor here from having babies, too. The problem is divorcing essential services from market transparency and hiding costs and needs alike behind a veil of bureaucracy.
Your argument presupposes that governments provide an essential good or service to society. I argue government is instead the biggest Mafia. National borders are mafia turf. Taxes are mafia extortion. Heck, organized crime syndicates are even known for providing charity and emergency services in many cities, and they do keep rival criminals in check. This doesn't mean mafias are necessary for a healthy city.
Society needs many services governments presently provide, but that does not justify government. As other analysts have suggested before, suppose government monopolized shoes. We all need shoes. But no matter how ill-fitting and ill-made those government shoes may be, a generation accustomed to government "right to shoes" would balk at suggestions shoes could be better provided by market means. "But who would make the shoes, and where? Out of what materials? How would they be distributed? What about people with little money, do you think they can afford $1000 Italian loafers? You just want the poor to go barefoot!" This same kinds of irrational arguments are raised when we suggest government police, courts, and borders are at best misguided, and at worst completely unnecessary obstacles. If we do need functional windows, do they need to be government windows? And do we in fact need these windows as your analogy suggests?
It all comes down to the question if you are willing to govern yourself. That is why I asked you, if you are willing to take into your own hands what is needed to have law and order within your surroundings. Since you cannot assume the good will of all people. You circumvented my question. Neither I nor you have a top solution to the problems we all face.
But it helps to ask the very essential questions, I think.
A government is not there to have it all fixed and done for the single individual, I agree. The less government, the less central, the less big organizations who were never elected but like to think in their tanks and sects all day long for "the whole world", the better.
But since the world is huge and since there are nations with borders, you cannot come up and decide that your nation doesn't need one and you and your little tribe can govern yourself. You just can't.
Cars are built by companies and shall be able to do so, not governments. We know where it leads when government wants to do it all. That is the problem. National governments need to secure the borders, need to spend the state money on necessarry infrastructure like streets, harbours, airports, public buildings and have its military ready to defend the populace.
All else is not their business but the business of the people who must be able to open up small, medium and big companies in order to function as a capable society. So they are able to feed themselves amongst each other and not having been fed by the holy government through oversized welfare progams. They fare well themselves if you leave them room to breathe and drop all this climate, gender, and DEI nonsense. For all the poor, disabled and otherwise needy ones, the society likes and will take care but making the whole of a society poor, disabled and otherwise needy, leads into desaster.