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First off, I suppose I should thank you for taking the mask off, if only for a moment.
But having said that the obvious counter argument is having admitted that you feel no particular sense of loyalty and are only shopping around for who ever will give you the best price, and will ditch them in a heartbeat should a better deal come along, why should anyone give you that deal? Having effectively announced your intention to defect in the any subsequent prisoners dilemma, why would you expect anyone to cooperate with you? It seems to me that your fall into the same trap that pretty much all utopians from a progressive background seem to fall into. An inability or unwillingness to consider the possibility of multiple agents.
I kind of touched on this in my reply to @sliders1234 below, but if an identity can be changed at will it ceases to be meaningful as an identity. If an if an identity can be changed at will, what obligation does anyone else have to honor it? The answer of course is "none", because an contract that can be broken on a whim without consequence is no contract, and that's what this is really about. The Free-rider problem. You want to enjoy the privileges of membership in a tribe or nation without having to bear the associated responsibilities.
Why do companies employ people who could switch to another company? Why do they sometimes compete with that other company by making better offers? Because good employees (or citizens in this case) bring value to the company/nation.
If I am a citizen of France currently, I still have to bear the responsibilities (paying taxes, following laws etc) even if I have the option to easily become a German citizen next week. Then I have to keep up my German responsibilities.
I'm not entirely onboard with it as I think national pride and the like does have a function. But it isn't entirely crazy. It's basically an extension of the Archipelago Scott wrote about. Freedom of movement as a way to pressure governments to be the best government. Democracy of the feet so to speak.
Just to be clear, Non-compete clauses do exist. Companies frequently take a stance on how a person can sell their labor after leaving, precisely to avoid that person jumping ship and directly helping a competitor. Of course, there is a larger body of law (the government's legal system) that enforces those clauses, so I suppose in the case of nations, the global legal system would allow nations to require that citizens not go and help another country which is economically competing with that nation.
Most workers aren't under no compete clauses though, that is reserved mostly for white collar knowledge jobs. It's not worth it for Forever 21 to have a no compete clause for their retail workers. And even if they did how would they ever know? And no competes are also often not legal depending on location. Right now if I had a no-compete clause for a job in PA, I could move to California and mostly ignore it entirely as California generally does not recognize no-compete clauses.
Sure. I'm just pointing out that it's not at all unheard of or uncommon for a company to try and get some exclusivity out of a worker.
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Whereas what the nation offers is all responsibility and privileges, if any, revokable upon the whim of the state. "Ask not what your country can do for you...."
Yes. We live in a society. That is what a society is.
Don't fuck with my punctuation and represent it as a direct quote.
Are you saying that I misquoted you?
Are you saying that I misrepresented your meaning?
Go ahead clarify if you like.
Indeed you did. You cut my sentence in half and replaced the "," with a "."
Indeed you did. The gist of my meaning is the nation is offering responsibility without privileges (or limited and revokable ones).
Responsibilities and privileges are the same phenomenon, just in opposite directions. The meaning of your comment was unchanged.
Even if that were true -- and I do not believe it is -- the direction is important. Receiving a windfall and being robbed are, after all, the same phenomenon just in opposite directions.
It is true, privilege is just another word for responsibility that someone else owes you. And while I understand why you in particular would like to deny it, they are inseparable.
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Why should a Nation confer identity?
Think of it from an analogy of the corporate world. Some companies attract talent by paying them a lot of money. Some do it by fostering an identity; "We are all a family here". I think to very many people it's evident that the former is a more 'honest' portrayal of the transaction/relation than the latter. If anything it's a meme that companies that tout a "family environment" are to be avoided because they are probably shortchanging you in what you want mostly from them, money.
In the same vein, why shouldn't a nation be just a place you live in? If you look at immigration trends (revealed preferences), its not that people want to move to the countries that give them the strongest national identity, but the countries that give them the best place to live in. I'm pretty sure more people want to move to America than China.
Buying into any form of national loyalty means the nation can effectively have an easier time short changing you, they can send you to the trenches, they can loot you of your earnings and yada yada.
In short; Why shouldn't a market system apply when choosing a place to live? Why not have competition in this domain? I think putting national identity above how good it is to live in a nation is putting the cart before the horse. Is voting with your feet/money not that much more powerful than just voting?
Why should anything confer identity? Why shouldn't it.
Your whole argument boils down to "what's in it for me?" the obvious counter-argument is "what's in it for anyone?"
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This is your position disguised as your opponents' position.
"Companies are not really like families" doesn't mean that families aren't real. It means that families that are as easy to change as changing your company, aren't real. And you're the one in favor of easy changes.
I don't see how its in contradiction to what I said. I am stating quite precisely that your nation should be easy to change. Because under that system Nations have an impetus to not shortchange their citizens (residents) too much.
Loyalty to a Nation is well and good if you actually like you Country. The founding fathers were loyal to America for the same reasons they were disloyal to England.
As an individual who wants to live a good life "fuck you I'm leaving" is much more appealing to me than "I'll stay here and fight with everything I have to make it better".
I can go fight and make somewhere else better. Respect should be bidirectional after all. Why be loyal to that who wrongs you? Would you be singing the same tune were you a part of a nation that hated you and your values?
But your company is easy to change. And as you point out, when a company claims to be loyal like a family, it's trying to shortchange you.
This is directly contradictory to your point. You think that when it's easy to change, the citizens are not shortchanged, but your own company example is one where it's easy to change and the citizen-equivalents are shortchanged after all.
Sure its not a given that ease of leaving/entering is 100% correlated to how much X can get away with extracting B from Y. Or "shortchaging" B.
But I brought up that example to convey that when something that when A implicitly wants more from you than what you agreed to, A is probably giving you less of what you agreed to get from A.
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This is simultaneously obviously true core of the dispute. Having said "fuck you I'm leaving" what consideration do the latter owe the former other than their enmity. Go away, we don't want you. We will not die in that man's company, that fears to die with us.
The latter doesn't owe the former anything.
Taxes were used in exchange or welfare/infrastructure/protection. Those are the concrete things that are being traded, anything else is abstract.
It might be a very useful narrative if the citizens of a nation do believe that they owe something more to a nation than what they already pay in taxes, some kind of loyalty. It might even be good for the individuals because it forces the group to stay around and improve things other than leaving.
But some countries are so far gone, and an individuals life is so short relative to institutional change that I can't in good faith suggest to anyone "just stay and make your country better bro".
If my friend laments to me that this country sucks, I won't tell him to stay around and potentially waste half of his life just voting and campaigning harder, I'd suggest him to leave to somewhere that better fits his values.
Much like marriages, some of them are better when fixed through perseverance and some of them are better when dissolved, I'm not going to ask a battered wife of a drunkard just to stay around and make the marriage better, I'll tell her to leave.
Precisely, and so I ask you the same question I asked @hustlegrinder. If the only governing principle is "what's in it for me" and all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't they just take your stuff?
Because that's something you can only get away with so many times before no more stuff is being made? I'm sure this is not the steelman of your question, but I think my answer to that is already embedded in my previous comment.
Answer me this? What option is better if a country truly royally sucks? Or what would you tell a friend who finds his country unbearable. Don't imagine he lives in the US, or Canada or Germany. Imagine he lives in cartel territory in Mexico.
My ideal allows those who love their countries and those who don't an option. Just because you have the option to leave doesn't mean you need to exercise it.
Your ideal is to treat people as interchangeable cogs in the economic machine. Components to be removed and replaced as one sees fit.
I do not share this ideal.
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What do we define as "shortchanging"? Restrictions under the law? Or just feeling like you aren't respected?
Someone could make the cheap counterargument that any corporate actor could just leave a country that has strict and well-enforced laws around dumping and pollution.
In addition, one could also argue that we have seen what happens when countries are sorted across values (India/Pakistan, the Balkan nations). Who is to say that nations becoming Red-Tribe-istan and Blue-Tribe-istan is possible, or even good?
I'm aware of Scott's Archipelago, but I also suspect it might only work in a world that doesn't have any historical context/baggage associated with our real-life one.
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Why should then the family system apply to families? Mothers only taking of their children, if someone pays them to. Likewise, children abandoning their parents in old age feeling no loyalty towards them or siblings treating eachother purely as fellow market participants.
If market is the provides superior outcomes, merely abolition of nation is insufficient to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, any non-market system must end.
Because you are already in a transactional relationship with a modern state where you pay taxes. You pay taxes for legal system/infrastructure/protection/etc.
If the country wants something more from you, your loyalty, then they should give something equivalent to that in return, which they are incapable of giving. Unlike in a family where children are capable of returning what their parents gave them.
I genuinely can't think a country ever returning that favor minus maybe hostage situations in a foreign land where the hostages went voluntarily.
Even a cursory examination of the world outside our windows proves proves this statement false. Outside some absurd scenario such as a child sacrificing their lives to save both of their parents, no, the child is not capable of returning what their parents gave them because what they gave them was life itself.
You say the state is incapable of loyalty, and while in some abstract sense you might be right, every day we see agents of the state, soldiers, cops, firefighters, EMS, Et Al risking their necks for people they don't know. How do you reconcile this? Do you dismiss such people as "suckers", or you honestly believe think your tax dollars are worth the risk that a father of 3 might not live to see his kids graduate, get married, etc...? Do you believe that your tax dollars are worth more than somebody else's husband, wife, son, or daughter? I don't see how you couldn't given your previous statements. If on the other hand you don't would you allow that to stop you from calling 911 if your building was on fire?
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In abstract-ideal-istan, the privileges are protection and institutions necessary to establish some independent private industry. The associated responsibilities are the taxes levied on profits made while doing so. It's not a prisoner's dilemma because the individual doesn't have the option to defect in any meaningful way.
Why would a country be willing to offer this deal? Because if they don't, someone else will, and everyone will go there.
Of course, in reality you can't reduce a country to merely a legal framework and a tax rate. There are durable illegible consequences to setting up a small business, such that emigration costs more than just lost tax dollars. And cultural dilution means there is a cost associated with immigration. If utopian progressives are ignoring something, I think it is these costs. "Dissolve all borders" passes game-theoretic and economic muster, but only if you can't see past the spreadsheet.
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Why, for the same reason people give me all other kinds of deals; doing that brings them value.
I mentioned that I see my relationship with a country as a business transaction — I pay the taxes and follow the regulations — and in return the state allows me to operate on the territory it controls and provides a range of useful services. As an honorable businessman, I uphold my part of such a deal.
It’s also not true that I’d ditch them in a heartbeat. First, there is value in a good long-term relationship, and second, moving assets and processes is not without cost.
Yes, I got that, and this is where the whole game with multiple agents thing comes in. The argument that it's all just a business transaction is a double edged sword. If all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't a country just take your stuff?
You thinking it’s not just a transaction makes it easier, not harder, for the state to take your stuff when the time comes, right as you’d stare at the process in disbelief, denial, hoping for the better and taking seriously the state’s shallow excuses for doing so. I’ve seen this happen many times. Sentimental feelings towards a country prevent people from cutting their losses early on.
What I have to offer are the yearly taxes and the ongoing benefits of my participation in the economy, the value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future.
Also most of the "stuff" we’re talking about consists of control over businesses and processes, that wouldn’t fare well after being seized.
What if the ongoing benefits of of your participation in the economy, are less than the perceived costs? You say "value a country receives out of my residence in it extends far in the future" but how can that be if you leave? Why shouldn't the state take your stuff and kick you to the curb should the perceive it to be in their interests to do so? That is what you would do were you in the state's position, is it not?
No, I don’t generally violate the NAP even if it’s profitable for me to do so — I am a principled man and I value these principles.
First, it’s simply not the case, in a viscerally evident way — the state makes money on taxes and also my participation in the economy of a country means that something in it is getting done well — this is how I get my capital in the first place.
Second, I think you haven’t really understood my perspective of seeing this as fundamentally a business relationship. Suppose you are subscribed to Netflix. You pay them 10$ per month, and in return you can watch movies there. If Netflix feels they are providing you this service at a loss, they can raise the prices (let’s call them “taxes”). Then you are free to either accept these prices or to switch to a different provider.
Similarly if a state feels they spend more value on me than it gets back, well they can raise taxes and then I can decide whether or not to relocate my enterprise after that.
Ideally this all leads to a mutually beneficial arrangement where I provide value to the state, and the state provides value to me; indeed the state can provide valuable services — protection, arbitrage, infrastructure, and so on — I am not opposed to paying for them. It is only fair.
The difference is of course that the state, unlike Netflix, can use force to compel me to accept a deal that I wouldn’t have accepted on my own free will. Some things, like liberal institutions, make it harder, so I support them; some things, like proliferation of nationalism, make it easier, so I oppose them.
First, can you prove it? Many people believe themselves to be indispensable, few are.
Second, I think I might understand better than you do. Having actually spent some time as a mercenary I am well aware of the implications and downsides of that perspective/lifestyle. Lets be blunt, the NAP is a dodge. No one outside yourself is obligated to honor your principles, least of all the people paying you.
Like I said, viewing everything as a business transaction is a double edged sword.
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"Loyalty to nation" doesn't mean "loyalty to the current government". And nation isn't the only loyalty there, and it becomes harder for the government to take your stuff if it interferes with loyalty to someone else and that loyalty is recognized.
I don't even know how you'd compute "most" when comparing financial and non-financial stuff. How would you compare, for instance, teaching CRT in schools to taking $X in taxes, and how would you compare either one to taking $Y in taxes, but using the money for things most people object to?
Well imagine if someone paid you one billion dollars, on a condition that your children have to listen to let’s say a course of ten 1-hour CRT lectures in school. Would you agree to it?
If yes, then there is in fact a value of $X that compares to teaching CRT in schools, and it is somewhere between zero and one billion.
It may be hard to estimate precisely, so in real life you should just go with what your intuition tells you is a better option.
I could give approximate answers like you suggest, but these answers would have large error bars on them, and because diminishing marginal utility applies differently to money and to non-monetary costs, it wouldn't be possible to add up the monetary values anyway, making them useless for comparison.
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Because if a country does that, people will predictably stop producing stuff for the country to take, and also will leave the country if they can.
Unless you mean "some of your stuff, but not enough that you're strongly incentivized to leave or stop producing stuff", in which case they're called "taxes".
But they aren't taking "people's" stuff, they are taking your stuff specifically. You the defector is getting your stuff taken, the cooperators keep their stuff.
How is the government in question distinguishing "cooperators" from "defectors" here, such that they are specifically taking the stuff of "defectors"?
If "defector" is a broad enough category, it might still be better to take only some of their stuff rather than all of it, even from the perspective of a government that only cares about obtaining resources for itself.
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First they came for the defectors? This is fine.
If your state ever gets to the point where people are so desperate to leave that the government starts going to extremes to discourage it, it's time to leave anyway, while the penalty is merely robbery, before the next "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall" goes up. "You're worthless and so I want to make it hard for you to leave me" is a self-contradictory claim. It's only a popular claim because the first part is a too-often-effective lie that abusive relationship partners use as a control tactic. But even when the best time to escape escalating abuse has already passed, the second-best time is "as soon as possible".
Better revisionof the article, before the COVID19 section got blanked.Edit: Don't know why that link didn't work, hopefully this one will.
Strangely, that links to something unrelated.
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Your link does not mention COVID.
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The point is not so about you defecting against the state, but rather about preventing the state from defecting against you.
"defecting" implies a relationship not in evidence. If you don't owe any loyalty to the state what makes you think the state should show any loyalty towards you?
The state never did. Arguably it can't by definition. Specific people may be inclined to have loyalty, but the pressures to get into power don't favor those people.
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