Which of these youthful ideals...

'How the bloody hell does he know?' Because, according to mainstream science, all human experience can be found in the brain, and the same science has found that the effects of anesthetic are comparable to that of death to the brain, in some ways. Whether a non-physical part of you goes to space and has eternal good times is irrelevant because it can not be measured and is not lacking in his views. The reason for his arrogance then is that the statement is based on measurements instead of faith.

rogerthat wrote: HackettFan wrote: Dayvenkirq wrote: If we are talking borders between nations, then I don't think there will ever be any elimination of the borders as long as there are communities that try to preserve their own identity. But if we are talking borders between districts within the same nation, then that's a whole another story. (I know these are all details from a long, long time ago, but mayhaps relevant to some extent. See this and this.) I've always interpreted the no borders advocates as being against all borders, from national borders on down to the fences that keep them out of concerts they haven't bought tickets to. I don't see a difference in any case. It's not less of an imposition if a local sheriff in Comanche County Oklahoma is elected by voters in California as opposed to voters in Mexico. I don't see how democracy (national or local) can co-exist with a no borders philosophy. For administrative purposes, you do need to have at least district level borders.  I think there is a HUGE difference as long as you don't give too much authority to districts.  You could completely liberate movement of labour from barriers that would otherwise be imposed by nation-states.  You could and would be forced to share resources with everyone instead of mounting national barriers to deny access.

Note, this is the opposite of the opposite of the libertarian ideal in the US, which wants as much local control as possible. I'm not saying that that makes you automatically wrong. I'm just noting that different geographical locales will have different philosophies (and fight over them).

Rogerthat wrote:  At the same time, the district level authorities would be charged with maintaining facilities and public services for its residents.  All this would of course require plenty of co-operation of a radical level we have not seen before.  Which is why it is unlikely to happen.

Or require plenty of coercion from a world government that doesn't understand the interests and does not represent the will of many tiny regions. Tyranny of the majority is not my idea of democracy.

Dean wrote:  the current borders in the Middle East are a direct result of Anglo-French meddling <span style="line-height: 18.2px;">a century ago </span>in a region of the world they barely understood. Everything that has occurred since then has merely made everything worse.

Absolutely true.

Dean wrote: Meh, atheism isn't a belief system, it is the absence of a belief system. The opposite of belief in gods can be expressed in two ways that at face value seem the same but are not (subtle but far from clever): 1. I believe that gods do not exist... which can be expressed as I believe that gods !{exist} 2. I do not believe that gods exist... which can be expressed as I !{believe} that gods exist where ! is the logical negation or NOT function. One is negating the existence of gods and is thus a belief, while the second is negating the belief in the existence of gods and therefore is not a belief. It is easy to confuse these two expressions because once one has been accepted then it tends to imply the other. Since believers in gods cannot prove that their gods exist then atheists only need to reject the belief to be able to assert that [the lack of evidence suggests] gods do not exist.

HackettFan wrote: Dean wrote:  the current borders in the Middle East are a direct result of Anglo-French meddling <span style="line-height: 18.2px;">a century ago </span>in a region of the world they barely understood. Everything that has occurred since then has merely made everything worse. Absolutely true.

Dean wrote: HackettFan wrote: Dayvenkirq wrote: If we are talking borders between nations, then I don't think there will ever be any elimination of the borders as long as there are communities that try to preserve their own identity. But if we are talking borders between districts within the same nation, then that's a whole another story. (I know these are all details from a long, long time ago, but mayhaps relevant to some extent. See this and this.) I've always interpreted the no borders advocates as being against all borders, from national borders on down to the fences that keep them out of concerts they haven't bought tickets to. I don't see a difference in any case. It's not less of an imposition if a local sheriff in Comanche County Oklahoma is elected by voters in California as opposed to voters in Mexico. I don't see how democracy (national or local) can co-exist with a no borders philosophy. Democracy works just fine with imaginary borders arbitrarily drawn on a map and would continue to work just as well without them. Each home, street, neighbourhood, parish, county, state, province and country operates its own democratic processes simply because what affects people on a local level is of no interest to those who reside outside that immediate locale. The span of control of those empowered to enact those democratic decisions extends as far as the people they can affect and that is set by arbitrary borders, yet the sphere of influence of each democratic decision extends as far as those affected by it and that can ignore those imaginary boundaries... just as a war in one region affects everyone in the neighbouring regions, and that in turn affects those in adjoining regions, a local decision that affects people outside that locale becomes undemocratic for those affected who where not permitted to vote upon it.  People in Orange County California are more concerned by who becomes sheriff in their county than they are about who is sheriff in Comanche County Oklahoma or any of the other 3,141 counties in the USA (or the 300 electoral constituencies in Mexico or the 308 federal districts in Canada, etc.,)...When voter turnout in Orange County is as low as 17% then motivation for them to interfere in the voting in Comanche County will be negligible. A better example would be sports. While map-borders are only effective on a national level (though some sports fans have cross-border allegiances even at national level) if we look at club level those borders do not exist, for example football teams like Liverpool and Manchester United have fans all over the world and they by far outnumber any local fans they may have. Another example is "pay what it's worth", which is another system that operates just fine without arbitrarily imposed barriers - sure some people would attend a fence-less concert without paying, (just as some people attempt to jump those fences today), but the majority would pay something. As communication barriers between disparate peoples living in the far corners of the world are broken down, for example by the Internet, we will start seeing our similarities and in time will recognise they are more important than any parochial differences that currently divide us. Once those personal barriers are removed then national ones would become less relevant. This won't happen in our lifetimes, but contrary to Andy's assertion that this will be driven by "neo-liberal governments", it would be driven by the people of the world. [Yeah, that's still a utopian thought, but one that is far more realistic than any political or corporate attempts at globalisation].

Dean wrote: HackettFan wrote: This invisible hand notion is insightful, Dean, and it addresses the issue at all levels (I'm not so moved the others who want to distinguish national and sub-national borders, as it places limits on the no borders concept, and therefore makes it less lofty). But I part company on one critical thing. Thanks to national news, I would absolutely take advantage of voting against certain candidates in other regions if allowed. Maybe you would not. Maybe the majority would not. And a minority of out-of-region people would also be motivated to vote in favour of those candidates ... just as they did in your <span style="line-height: 18.2px;">Missouri</span><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">/</span><span style="line-height: 1.4;">Kansas example, [in that particular instance the pro-slavery fraudsters simply out-numbered the free-state fraudsters because of geography, in the modern world this is less of a limitation]. The corollary to that is that a minority of people from those regions would be similarly motivated to vote for or against the candidate in your region. However, due to a matter of scale, this would only be a problem on very major issues. Minor issues (such as who is sheriff) the effect would be negligible.</span> <span style="line-height: 18.2px;"> HackettFan wrote: </span>There is an historical example in the US. Residents in Kansas had to vote initially whether to enter the US as a slave state or a free state. Residents of Missouri rushed over to Kansas to vote, and it entered as a slave state. When the actual residents of Kansas drafted and voted on a state constitution, though, they outlawed slavery. <span style="line-height: 18.2px;">That level of voter-fraud was quickly discovered because considerably more votes were cast than the total number of residents that the newly created </span><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">state </span><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">had, and that in turn raised questions over the legitimacy of the state's initial pro-slavery constitution. That, and what followed, presaged your civil war and ultimately led to the abolition of slavery.</span> <span style="line-height: 18.2px;"> </span> That example of voter-fraud was a consequence of having borders in the first place since voting Kansas as a slave state would have affected the balance of power in the senate. Without state and national borders the senate would not have existed so the vote would not have happened. However, this is still an example of the difference between 'span of control' and 'sphere of influence' - people in other states were motivated to rig the vote in Kansas because it affected them directly. This seems wrong because we are thinking within the confines of borders - the whole dynamic would be different in a borderless society, and that would lead to a different process than the one we are use to.

This is the best description of the no borders idea that I've heard, so I applaud. I still have nagging doubts about the workability of it. In my example, there was no discovery of voter fraud. Kansas was admitted as a slave state because of the vote. It backfired because it was a slave state in name only. Most of Kansas' populace were northerners who moved west. A major point perhaps overlooked here is that Kansas was a free state in practice because it, like all US states, was obliged to draft a state constitution. US state constitutions cannot be over-ridden by federal law unless they are in conflict with the Federal US Constitution. With no borders, there would be no lower level protections, that are obvious to me at any rate, because there would be no lower level constitutions. There couldn't be unless we know where one applies and another one doesn't. Of course one can say that there would be no US Constitution on the national level, but all that really means is that national levels of government (the nations many want to get rid of) zoom outward to a singular world level. So, the problem just becomes larger in scope, yet never really resolving anything. Instead of having nations at war, we have districts and nation states at war, probably exacerbated by a neglectful world government. If I'm wrong, you're welcome to let me know.

HackettFan wrote: This is the best description of the no borders idea that I've heard, so I applaud. I still have nagging doubts about the workability of it. In my example, there was no discovery of voter fraud. Kansas was admitted as a slave state because of the vote. It backfired because it was a slave state in name only. Most of Kansas' populace were northerners who moved west.

Edited by Dean - October 19 2015 at 21:04

Dean wrote: Erm, it's not my country's history so it's not something I know anything about, I only know what wikipedia tells me, and that is: Kansas was admitted into the Union on the 29th January 1981 as a free-state... their admission as a slave-state was blocked due to questions of legality over its constitution [because of voter-fraud]. But we digress.

Dean wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Dean wrote: Erm, it's not my country's history so it's not something I know anything about, I only know what wikipedia tells me, and that is: Kansas was admitted into the Union on the 29th January 1981 as a free-state... their admission as a slave-state was blocked due to questions of legality over its constitution [because of voter-fraud]. But we digress.   proof that one cannot believe everything Wikipedia says...   totally understandable mistake in paraphrasing it... I'm convinced there is 80% chance I would've done it too.  1861 ... damn dyslexia.