I believe in the future it will seem ridiculous that people from many countries are prevented from traveling to some other richer countries, while the people from the rich countries can freely move about as they please.
There seems to be a common belief, even among the educated, that the security of nations is somehow completely unrelated to the security of the individual.
In reality, one is the macro; the other, micro. They are solutions to the exact same problem at a different scale.
The same way that you lock your door, we collectively close a border. The same way that we call the cops on the drug house, we bomb << entity >> .
So, to re-phrase your future view a little: If you foresee us being able to dispel the notion of door locks in favour of trusting our fellow humans completely, you can imagine your border free world.
Even at the local level, this is problematic - it's depressingly easy to find reports of incorrectly targeted police action. In such a case, the security-first approach (of both the police and the homeowner) has resulted in wrongful arrests and death not withstanding everyone acting in good faith.
Correspondingly, enforcing internal or external security with absolutist certitude virtually guarantees a serious error sooner or later.
The problem with this analogy is that while it's reasonable to think of oneself as the sole authority over one's own home, that concept does not scale in any meaningful way to the size of a country, unless the governing power is vested in a monarchy.
A great many political theses are advanced from all over the political spectrum in the format of 'You wouldn't tolerate X - so why does the government? We the people demand an end to X!' However, 'we the people', when taken as a whole, have a demonstrable tendency to disagree amongst ourselves, and almost never act in concert. There are all sorts of thing which we should find surprising or unacceptable within our own homes but whose existence we accept or at least tolerate within our county, state, or country because either a majority of our neighbors hold views which differ from ours or because constitutional or legislative power takes precedence over our own preferences.
A better analogy might be to consider the country as something similar to an apartment building or even a small town.You can exert a degree of security insofar as it serves the common good, but an absolutist approach of the kind you describe rapidly becomes self-defeating and unsustainable over the longer term. I might add that absolutism in this context refers to the idea of abolishing borders as much as to the idea of sealing them. After all, we have controls in between the borders of US states with limited powers to enforce prohibitions or requirements unique to that state, from carrying certain produce to wearing a motorcycle helmet, and these are not considered especially onerous.
Rather than abolition of borders, I see a trend away from a presumption of exclusion as the default and towards a policy of neutral vigilance - in other words, personal migration will come to be seen in the same light as other trade flows, subject to inspection and monitoring but requiring specific grounds for interference.
So, suppose you have a business importing silk from China, and the hacky part is that it's woven in conformity with 6502 assembler code or something. It comes into the US in a cargo container, and we all accept that DHS/CBP want to assure themselves that it doesn't include radioactive materials, smallpox, or marauding silkworm colonies. That done, we expect them to be indifferent to the question of whether 8-bit silken handkerchief designs will affect the US economy in positive or negative fashion - that's for the market to discover, not the customs inspectors, as long as there's no ongoing trade dispute between China and the US justifying their exclusion in accordance with treaty.
We already have such a policy in place for visiting tourists and businesspersons from other developed countries, and which is mostly reciprocal - you can grab your passport and fly to Japan on a whim for up to 90 days, and vice versa. Within both the US and the EU, the benefits of allowing migration between the individual member states seems to considerably outweigh the various costs; economics suggests that rational policymaking on international migration will go the same way sooner or later.
Of course, this isn't foolproof and the downside of such a policy is that criminals can exploit such openness to further their wicked ends. But insofar the number of such people/incidents is low - not least because more people appreciate the freedoms of the open model, and have a stake in its preservation - that risk is tolerable.
The problem with this analogy is that while it's reasonable to think of oneself as the sole authority over one's own home, that concept does not scale in any meaningful way to the size of a country, unless the governing power is vested in a monarchy.
What are you talking about? The recognized governments of the world are the sole powers of the areas of land they control, in the same manner that I might be recognized as being the master of my domain; in fact more so!
In essence: enough other people agree that they are, so they are. I think you're reading too far into the analogy to assert that democratic governments as entities in and of themselves don't fit.
That done, we expect them to be indifferent to the question of whether 8-bit silken handkerchief designs will affect the US economy in positive or negative fashion - that's for the market to discover, not the customs inspectors, as long as there's no ongoing trade dispute between China and the US justifying their exclusion in accordance with treaty.
I'm not sure what part of the planet you live on where this happens. When and if we actually do establish it with trade, we can start worrying about immigration.
What are you talking about? The recognized governments of the world are the sole powers of the areas of land they control, in the same manner that I might be recognized as being the master of my domain; in fact more so!
The difference is that while it's relatively easy for you to make a decision and then act upon it, in a democratic country it's quite rare for the population to be so unified that the government of the day engages in completely unilateral actions. Not only is the government constrained by disagreements among the governed which affect its capacity for unitary policymaking, it's also usually constrained by constitutional matters which may prevent it from acting in certain ways despite the clear wishes of a legitimate majority.
That's why I suggested that scaling up the behavior of a householder to the size of a country is going to give you a monarchy of some kind. North Korea is governed by someone who seems to believe that the nation's security is best served by sealing off the whole country from its neighbors, but I rather doubt you want to live there.
When and if we actually do establish it with trade
Well this is quite close to what we have now. If you or I decide to start importing stuff from China, the customs people don't give two hoots about which particular things are imported in most cases. Nobody, for example, is going to call you up and say 'we halted your furniture shipment because we don't like tables with built-in drawers, what the economy needs right now is a greater supply of chairs.'
The difference is that while it's relatively easy for you to make a decision and then act upon it, in a democratic country it's quite rare for the population to be so unified that the government of the day engages in completely unilateral actions
Did you miss the whole "Let's go on a desert adventure and finish what dad started" that happened a few years back?
Well this is quite close to what we have now.
No offense, but if you actually think this you are completely ignorant of world affairs in general, but specifically international trade. Things to Google: Softwood Lumber, Corn Industry subsidies, Farm subsidies, OPEC.
They are the norm. Free Trade accommodations are specifically negotiated and are in fact the real edge cases in the world of trade at the movement. Even when they do exist, there are often disputes.
Give me one example of an import/export international trade experience that has not been subject to protectionist measures of some nature and perhaps I can explore your point some more.
> The sooner the world will have no borders the better.
I think you should really think that over. A world with no borders is a world with one government.
Currently, if your government becomes something you can't tolerate, you can usually move to another country, or at least dream of moving. With a single, world government, your only option is revolution, which I believe is rapidly becoming almost impossible and certainly would be against the might and resources of a world government.
Are you really willing to resign your children, grandchildren, and humanity in general to some unknown world government of the future? Are you really so trusting?
Even if you don't believe that under such a system, human rights would erode at an alarming rate, you should at least shun it for the very reason that there is no diversity that will save you in case of unforeseen events. You want the world to be a field of wheat, all of a single strain. You would never advocate such a plan with actual wheat, since you know that diversity is a form of insurance.
When something is possible, it is often not necessary. That it's possible that I may strike you in the nose if you're rude enough is generally enough to keep you from being rude enough to cause me to need to strike you. That revolution is possible is generally enough for governments not to trample too heavily on their population. In both cases, the actual act is not carried out, just the possibility of it is enough.
But I agree that the gulf between civilian and government might is fearfully large already, which makes moving to another country a much better option. Of course, your world won't have that option.
But you're back to the point of the OP - for all the people that want to exercise the option (e.g. some residents of China, North Korea or Iran) moving to another country isn't an option, so having separate countries isn't helping them anyway.
Also, since the EU has borders with free movement (and doesn't even check on internal borders), which meets the grandparent's goal of being able to easily move countries, you are wrong to say this inevitably means forming a single world government.
How old is the EU? Already, after only a few years, the erosion of sovereignty of the individual countries is well along. I think it proves the point more than refutes it.
About 50. Nations have chosen to delegate some parts of their running certainly - more so than the US states in some areas, less so in most others.
Any answer to the first point? This debate is immaterial since in countries that people actually want to leave: a. their own government won't let them leave and b. our governments won't let them come.
The question I suppose is, can we find a way to reduce our borders without creating a world government, since that is clearly a bad thing? I believe we can, will and should.
Why should I trust or distrust a world government more or less than the current ones?
It's not about trust, but about choice. It's like with any product. Lots of choice plus little vendor lock-in tends to lead to better products. No or little choice plus strong vendor lock-in leads to worse products.
If you combine lots of countries/governments with more open borders, then people can shop around for a government they like.
What is the last time in living memory that people in a developed country revolted against their rulers?
Each time someone gets tired of the government in their current country and decides to move because of it, that is a revolt against their rulers.
The point is there is no need for me to overthrow my government as long as I'm free to move. Violent revolt is simply not necessary if borders are open. If you really don't like the government you have, pick a different one. There are plenty to chose from around the world, and it's a lot cheaper and easier than staging a violent revolution.
A world with no borders is a world with one government.
Or a world with no government. Saying many governments is better than one government is like saying more slave masters is better than one, since some of them might be more lenient.
A world with no government lasts exactly as long as it takes for some charismatic guy to round up some armed men and set up a new government. Out of 300-500 million people in the 13th century we had Genghis Khan--how many Genghis Khans are we going to find out of 7 billion people?
Humanity's had two steady states--hunting and gathering, and governments. It's an interesting question how authority functioned in hunter-gatherer tribes prior to the invention of civilization and government, but since then, government has been the only steady state. It's even more of a steady state than hunting and gathering, because the hunter-gatherers kept realizing they were better warriors than the grain-fed populations of a civilization, so they conquered neighboring civilizations and set up their own government.
This belief, while widely held is utterly unproven. Things are vastly different now than they were in Genghis Khan's time. Further, in Africa hunter/gatherer was doing pretty well for the most part until the imperialists interfered.
The issues before were poor education and slow communication. If your neighbor country decided to conquer you, by the time you were mobilized to defend yourself you had already lost.
Education has gotten vastly better over time. We didn't switch away from Monarchy because the monarchy decided to give up their power. The people became too educated to be controlled in this manner.
Communication is also practically instant now. If a Genghis Khan began conquering a government-less world with our current level of technology, by the time he finished conquering the first neighbor he would already be surrounded by everyone else.
I'm not saying Anarchy could work, but rather that we don't know yet. It's never been properly tried. Of course you would expect this. Governments don't want it to be tried because if it did somehow manage to work they would lose their power.
Further, in Africa hunter/gatherer was doing pretty well for the most part until the imperialists interfered.
Hunter/gatherer did well for the vast majority of human history, all around the world. But imperialists did interfere. You can't handwave that away.
Communication is also practically instant now. If a Genghis Khan began conquering a government-less world with our current level of technology, by the time he finished conquering the first neighbor he would already be surrounded by everyone else.
Why would he be surrounded by anyone? People don't voluntarily protect each other unless they identify as part of the same group, whether tribal or national. How many Americans actually cared about the Syrian invasion and occupation of Lebanon? How many knew? And you expect people under anarchy to voluntarily mobilize for the sake of strangers around the world?
Also, it's not entirely clear that our current level of technology and communication would continue to function without government; they likely require a free market system[1], and free markets require consistent property rights and a functioning legal system, both available to all people. None of this can be provided without a government.
Things are vastly different now than they were in Genghis Khan's time. Governments are even more entrenched, and it's not clear that it's even possible for major parts of the world to function without them. Empirically, I'd rather go with what's been proven to work and improve on it.
[1] At minimum; you could maintain a communication infrastructure with a more centralized economic system, but that would be even less anarchic.
First off, I would just point out that a tremendous amount of literature has been written about Anarchistic theory. Probably a lot more than we have time left in our lives to completely read. You can't just handwave the system away with "yea, but there are bad people!". This has obviously been covered at length. What the theory lacks is real world large scale testing which will obviously be extremely difficult to do.
>You can't handwave that away.
Which is why I didn't. I gave the reasons I believe people were susceptible to it and gave reasons that those problems may no longer apply.
>And you expect people under anarchy to voluntarily mobilize for the sake of strangers around the world?
I'm not expecting anything. I'm considering the possibility that if we switched to a government-less world (which would mean drastic changes, no government implies a great deal of other changes) that if someone tried to rise up and take it away from us people might mobilize to stop it.
Your Syrian/Lebanon examples don't strictly apply because those are other countries. Invade the US and see how passive people are. In a government-less world there is no more "country". Potentially people would form other kinds of groups and not care about people outside of their group, but if they are ignorant enough to do that then they wont be intelligent enough to have an Anarchist system at all, Genghis Khan or no.
>Also, it's not entirely clear that our current level of technology and communication would continue to function without government
Open source and various open source systems seem to work well enough. It's not clear or proven but to do that someone would have to actually try it and see.
>they likely require a free market system
No, this is one of those drastic changes I was talking about. You can't have any kind of bartering system what so ever or it just devolves right back into the current system. Ancap is a nonsense theory like US-Libertarianism is for largely the same reasons.
I do believe though, that the system isn't viable even with our current technology because I think that the constraint of having no barter system means there can be no work that has to be done that no one wants to do. This means we would have to have robots doing all that kind of work.
>None of this can be provided without a government.
Not true. If you're really interested, have a look at some Anarchist writing and see what they actually have to say about these issues. It's not some kind of cursed literature that will damn you for reading, it's just an idea that may even be wrong.
>Governments are even more entrenched, and it's not clear that it's even possible for major parts of the world to function without them.
Big parts of the world do function without them today. You don't have to buy into the system, I'm not convinced myself (and I have no confidence that it will be tried on a large enough scale on my lifetime anyway) but the effort put into it deserves more than the simple brush off that you give it.
>Empirically, I'd rather go with what's been proven to work and improve on it.
I wouldn't frame the system we have today as "proven to work" but rather "managed not to utterly fail outright". If you're a programmer you should be able to appreciate this difference.
The issue with this mindset is that at some point the government system becomes a drag on progress. The government is always a drag to some extent but they usually provide a net gain due to the services they provide (e.g. justice system). When and if we reach the point that we could provide most or all of these services in a more efficient form than they do (e.g. email today vs. US Postal service or telegram service) all that remains is the drag. I think we're already seeing signs of this (e.g. government attempts to prop up the obsolete media distribution model).
First off, I would just point out that a tremendous amount of literature has been written about Anarchistic theory. Probably a lot more than we have time left in our lives to completely read. You can't just handwave the system away with "yea, but there are bad people!". This has obviously been covered at length.
If you're going to refer me to the existing literature, please at least make a specific reference. There's been just as much (if not more) philosophy written about why a government is necessary.
What the theory lacks is real world large scale testing which will obviously be extremely difficult to do.
Somalia's been trying it out for years. The results don't look promising.
Your Syrian/Lebanon examples don't strictly apply because those are other countries. Invade the US and see how passive people are.
If you invaded the US, I think Syrians would be quite passive about it indeed.
In a government-less world there is no more "country". Potentially people would form other kinds of groups and not care about people outside of their group, but if they are ignorant enough to do that then they wont be intelligent enough to have an Anarchist system at all, Genghis Khan or no.
People have always formed groups and not cared about people outside of their group. That's how humans work. If anarchism doesn't expect humans to work that way, then anarchism is a bad system for humans.
You're assuming I'm dismissing anarchism without considering the arguments for it or anything. Actually, I'm dismissing it after a lot of consideration, partially about anarchism and partially about idealistic, theoretical political philosophies in general.
>If you invaded the US, I think Syrians would be quite passive about it indeed.
The point is that, yes people tend to only care about their group but there are different levels of group. For example, when the Russians had their "communist" revolution practically the whole world cared because they were terrified it would happen in their country as well (and in some cases like Spain, it did).
>People have always formed groups and not cared about people outside of their group.
As just shown, while this may be technically true group size changes depending on the level of threat up to and including "group human".
>That's how humans work.
Now you're moving toward a more interesting argument. We see how humans behave but how much of that is because of our nature and how much is because of the environment we grow up in? There's tons of interesting research about this question (one starting point: http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm).
>You're assuming I'm dismissing anarchism without considering the arguments for it or anything. Actually, I'm dismissing it after a lot of consideration, partially about anarchism and partially about idealistic, theoretical political philosophies in general.
I'm assuming you dismiss it after working it out in your own head without consulting the existing body of knowledge on the subject, and it sounds like you just confirmed that my assumption was completely correct.
AFAIU, this site isn't about circle-jerking, it's about intelligent conversation. In that spirit, if I see someone making uneducated off hand "me too" comments like "anarchism can't work, it's human nature!" I'm going to challenge it, even if I'm not convinced myself. Circle-jerking isn't learning, it's not a way forward.
My argument is that in the absence of a strong government, various warlords and the like will attempt to seize power for themselves. So thank you for supporting it.
Again, if you want to get into an intellectual wanking session about how nice it would be if we lived in a world where absolutely no one attempted to use violence or seize power over other people, I'll kindly provide Somalia as empirical evidence that we live in a very different world and turn my attentions to the question of how a society of actual human beings* can function, and hopefully can function better than it currently does.
Now you're moving toward a more interesting argument. We see how humans behave but how much of that is because of our nature and how much is because of the environment we grow up in?
Yes, and? How exactly do we get those environments? Co-recursively, of course--the environment influences human behavior and human behavior influences the environment. In general that's the kind of system that, hopefully, reaches a steady state at some point. Empirically we've observed two--primitivism and governed civilization. Anarchic civilization doesn't seem to be an option. (I'm actually fairly open to considerations of primitivism, which is likely as anarchic as humans can get.)
I'm assuming you dismiss it after working it out in your own head without consulting the existing body of knowledge on the subject, and it sounds like you just confirmed that my assumption was completely correct.
On the contrary--I'm considering the actual knowledge fairly thoroughly. I'm also considering as much of the theory as I can (and I'm more familiar with it than you realize), but most of that theory is fundamentally useless as it lacks any empirical knowledge at all.
It's the height of arrogance to confuse any political theory with knowledge. Anarchist theory has certain assumptions of how an anarchic civilization would function, and if you're talking to fellow anarchists you can both take that answer as a given and operate from that basis, but that doesn't mean a damned thing, because it's not knowledge, it's a shared assumption based on non-empirical reasoning which fundamentally does not and cannot provide a rationally convincing answer at all.
And that is ultimately the fundamental flaw of anarchism--we live in a world with plenty of societies that function fairly well, with plenty of empirical evidence of how different social structures work out in practice, and yet anarchists want to throw all of that away in favor of a completely untested system just because of some ideological opposition to government and private property.
>My argument is that in the absence of a strong government, various warlords and the like will attempt to seize power for themselves.
Actually it was outside governments imposing themselves on a populous. Yes, to get Anarchism this would have to be dealt with and so far they have not had much success.
>Again, if you want to get into an intellectual wanking session about how nice it would be if we lived in a world where absolutely no one attempted to use violence or seize power over other people
There will always be people who want to try this. My claim is that if most of the countries of the world were Anarchist then someone threatening that would be met the same way threatening democracy is met today.
>Anarchic civilization doesn't seem to be an option.
Much of the literature is about real world events. The actual problem with it is that it's on small scales. The largest examples probably being Spain and part of Russia during their revolution. In the case of Spain literally everyone joined together to stop the Anarchists. We don't have large scale empirical knowledge because people in positions of power don't want us to.
For me this is the strongest argument that there is something to the idea. If it were a fatally flawed idea the smart thing to do would be to let some high profile country try it and watch them fail. Then the book would be pretty well closed on the matter.
>Anarchist theory has certain assumptions of how an anarchic civilization would function, and if you're talking to fellow anarchists you can both take that answer as a given and operate from that basis, but that doesn't mean a damned thing, because it's not knowledge, it's a shared assumption based on non-empirical reasoning which fundamentally does not and cannot provide a rationally convincing answer at all.
Actually it's a large part Philosophy and a large part of real world occurrences. The thing really missing, as I've said is the scale.
>and yet anarchists want to throw all of that away in favor of a completely untested system just because of some ideological opposition to government and private property
How well you think the system works depends on who you are. People who's homes are being destroyed in Afghanistan probably don't think too much of it. People starving to death while we in the west throw away tons of food every day probably don't think much of it.
Further it is false that Anarchists want to throw everything away. Every proposal I've seen used some form of democracy, for example.
Lastly, the bases of the idea is a moral one. Why does anyone have the right to be over anyone else. Given the levels of corruption in government around the world, this strikes me as a valid question.
My claim is that if most of the countries of the world were Anarchist then someone threatening that would be met the same way threatening democracy is met today.
Democracy is continually threatened all over the world and no one does much about it without some sort of explicit self-interest.
I would classify that as primitivism, despite the presence of agriculture. It's certainly not a satisfying answer to your claim that we can have anarchism and still hold onto computers and the internet.
The actual problem with it is that it's on small scales. The largest examples probably being Spain and part of Russia during their revolution. In the case of Spain literally everyone joined together to stop the Anarchists. We don't have large scale empirical knowledge because people in positions of power don't want us to.
For me this is the strongest argument that there is something to the idea. If it were a fatally flawed idea the smart thing to do would be to let some high profile country try it and watch them fail. Then the book would be pretty well closed on the matter.
If the entire rest of the world was operating as a cartel, yes, the smart thing to do would be to let anarchism fail by itself. As it stands, setting up an anarchic society--especially in the middle of a revolution or civil war--just means there's tons of competing factions, each of which is better served by taking the anarchic territory for itself rather than letting it fall to a rival. At least unless the anarchic territory is more difficult to conquer than it is worth.
Lastly, the bases of the idea is a moral one. Why does anyone have the right to be over anyone else. Given the levels of corruption in government around the world, this strikes me as a valid question.
I used to have moral problems with this too, but ultimately it doesn't matter--I'd rather limit myself to making small changes on the real world we have to generate better results.
>Democracy is continually threatened all over the world
Not really. Maybe democracy of one place, but when the Russian revolution happened democracies everywhere were afraid it would happen to them so they responded to Russia. That's what I'm talking about.
>I would classify that as primitivism, despite the presence of agriculture.
Perhaps, but the point is that it's conceptually possible to have relatively large groups of people without government.
Personally I consider primitivism a non-idea because of the simple fact that primitivism can't support the amount of people we have today. If we forgo agriculture it is estimated the world can support about 500 million people. Who's going to select the 6.5 billion that have to die?
>I used to have moral problems with this too, but ultimately it doesn't matter--I'd rather limit myself to making small changes on the real world we have to generate better results.
I've done the same. I just entertain the idea that we don't have the best possible system and to get the best system may mean starting over at some point.
but when the Russian revolution happened democracies everywhere were afraid it would happen to them so they responded to Russia
Democracies fought to preserve the Russian Tsar because they thought his overthrow was a threat to democracy? No. They fought communism because they thought communism was a threat to their regimes in specific, just as other monarchies fought the French Revolutionary Wars because they thought the French Revolution was a threat to their regimes in specific. The commonality is that there are regimes of elites fighting to preserve their own power. Anarchy doesn't have that by definition.
I just entertain the idea that we don't have the best possible system and to get the best system may mean starting over at some point.
You don't get to start over unless people get hungry and desperate. And I think we have a system that can sustainably keep people out of hunger and desperation. If I'm wrong, maybe the anarchists will get another shot.
>They fought communism because they thought communism was a threat to their regimes in specific
Yes. And if we ever have full Anarchy and if it turns out to be as good as some people think I believe people will fight just as aggressively to preserve it as they have to preserve previous systems that weren't even all that great (sometimes downright awful).
>And I think we have a system that can sustainably keep people out of hunger and desperation
Some, but there are a lot of people that are both hungry and desperate. Further "starting over" isn't strictly necessary. A smaller Anarchist system could be created within the confines of larger existing systems and this has been done to some extent with varying levels of success.
There is some contradiction in this thread, on the one hand the whole world population is deemed to be incapable of rising up against a 'bad' world government and on the other all it takes is one charismatic guy to round up 'some armed men'.
I don't think you'd end up with a single world government. I think you'd end up with thousands of smaller conquerers carving out territory for themselves, and a gradual process where empires grow, break apart, join together, etc.. You know, basically the entire history of the world over again, except with nuclear weapons.
While I too would like to see the borders opened up a bit, there does have to be some control. If you just let everyone do whatever they want you end up with London: an endless massive sprawl that produces and consumes the majority of resources in England. It would have been much better to control the flow of immigration a bit better and have more big cities than one insanely large one and wouldn't make most of the country look like free loaders on financial topology charts.
Are you proposing that the US should open the floodgates to whoever wants to come over here? I'm not anti-immigration by any means, but letting everyone in all at once seems like a clearly bad idea.
You can move about very freely in the US. If you live in Florida, you can quit your job and move to Alaska today. No notice, no paperwork at all. You just go live there. And this system works fine in practice.
But if you decide to stop along the way and live in Canada, well suddenly it's an international incident. You have to apply in advance -- pay fees and fill out forms. They will physically examine your body. Committees you never meet will look into the most private details of your life and evaluate whether you are worthy to move to Canada. It will take a long time and you might be denied.
Why is it dangerous to let people cross imaginary lines? People don't suddenly become vile and dangerous at 49° N.
> People don't suddenly become vile and dangerous at 49° N.
A fair number of people north of that line think that about a lot of the people immediately south of that line... I'm speaking somewhat facetiously as a Canadian, but the degree of anti-US sentiment can sometimes be irrationally and absurdly high. For all that it is still much easier for skilled immigrants to get into Canada than the US.
As someone who is rather attached to the idea of entitlement programs, I fear you're right. However the amount of good that could be done by more open borders is likely to be much greater than the good done social programs, so this looks like a place I'll have to just grin and bear it.
