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invalidOrTaken | 6 months ago

No, this is insane. I will make a thousand people uncomfortable on group dates if that's what it takes to have an actual country.

Are people hurt? Are things unfair? Would it be kinder and more humane if we could see each others' souls, and trust prevailed? Absolutely.

But we can not. And there is an asymmetry to civilization---it is easier to destroy than to build. This makes division and exclusion (other names: protection, safeguarding, immune system, comment moderation, firewalls, safe sex) practical and essential. Do you want your startup's bank account "united and standing together" with some other startup's bank account? Division allows good things to remain good.

None of this is to say all gatekeepers are honest, all standards are fair, or that injustice doesn't exist. Everything is a work in progress. But if the worst you have to complain about is an inconsequential misunderstanding on a group date, count yourself lucky.

discuss

order

PaulHoule|6 months ago

The more I think about it the more incoherent it seems. We don’t know what the person’s immigration status is, we don’t know if they have a passport, but if they did the bouncer/bartender only cares about your birth date, not your visa. Is the author asking for the abolition of all border controls? That’s something different from patriotism.

Before 1920 there were no passports or standardization of border controls but there were also no international human rights. If your state wanted to do you in they could just do it and not face any consequences. “Genocide”, “War Crimes”, and “Crimes Against Humanity” were all introduced in the next 30 years. Any formalization of your rights requires that the state “see like a state” and document your existence. In a lot of places, like China, there are restrictions on internal migration because a rapidly industrializing country faces challenging problems in development.

Today there was a great podcast episode about the origin of human rights as we know it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...