This is my response to something The Dollar Vigilante wrote @dollarvigilante. Here is the post.
In reality my response is not exclusively to his email, news letter, etc as I have seen this attitude a lot.
Question/Title: "Are National Borders To Keep Immigrants Out Or Tax Slaves In?"
Are doors on your house and locks to keep you locked in, or to keep people out?
It is really easy to get all idealistic about Anarchy and I tend to ideally see that as where I'd like the world to go as well. However, there are some distinct problems with just deciding to complain about things like this these days.
#1 - Human nature.
#2 - The education and mindset of the masses
Let's put it this way. If I was Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Adolph Hitler, Julius Caesar, or any other historical figure that liked to control land I would love people asking questions like this.
Why do you need that moat? Is it to keep your tax slaves trapped behind your walls or to keep us out?
I'd act with glee if people talked about abolishing the castle walls, the moat, and leaving their doors unlocked at night.
I understand WHY people say this. Yet it is a moot point if you don't solve the education and human nature problem first.
If you don't do that then all these idealistic ideas would be nothing more than a suicidal path that you could feel completely righteous about.
Then when you are dead... How likely do you think others will follow your lead?
I don't think it is very likely unless they also are suicidal.
There are a lot of problems within our education system, and the way that a large portion of the global population think that makes simply abolishing borders as stupid as you removing the door to your house and leaving your windows open.
This predominantly ties into the topic of immigration.
People like to say there is no illegal immigration.
Sorry, even with Anarcho-Capitalism there is indeed trespassing. That is what illegal immigration is. Trespassing (entering through some means other than the door and without invite). Anarcho-Capitalism and even the Non-Aggression Principle would consider you within your right to deal with those trespassers.
The fact of the matter is many of these trespassers do not have pleasant intentions. They do not come with the intentions of becoming a better person, joining your group, or living in harmony with you. Some of them have very gleefully violent intentions and they love people talking about abolishing borders.
Some of them practice a religion that is also a state (thus, technically anathema to your concept of Anarchy anyway) and it not only has an element known as Jihad or Jyhad. It also has a much lesser known aspect known as...
Hijrah which simply put is "Invasion by immigration".
They trespass and then replace your beliefs with theirs, your customs with theirs, and seize the property as theirs. You are an infidel. If you agree to convert you will be spared, but that is still replacing your beliefs, and customs with theirs.
This is not all of them. Yet technically if they do not think this way then by their religion they are an Apostate. No matter if they seem peaceful or not this religion is technically also a state.
Would I be okay with people crawling through my windows that I knew had the potential of destroying, harming, and forced conversion?
No. I'd like to think I am not that stupid.
So the argument at this point is that I am generalizing or stereotyping.
Sure. Yet there is a solution. In my house it is called a door. If they knock I can choose to invite them in or not. If they need my help and some food and I've decided to let them in I can wisely make certain I don't invite so many people that not only can I not feed them, but my family suffers.
In the current nations this is called a port of entry. People can come to a port of entry much like a door and request access. If it seems like a good idea then we let them in. If we realize by doing so we will harm people that are already here by stressing the capabilities of the system too much then we turn them away, and much like we might say "Come back in a week" at our door, we could say "We are at our quota for what we can handle, come back in 6 months".
Now would it be nice to not need any of this?
Yes, but you mistakenly think the majority of people think like you.
They don't.
With some effort in the RIGHT places the mass population might be shifted so they could think more like you. I do not foresee this as being a fast process.
I am an advocate for ditching the Prussian Education System, and also introducing critical thinking as an ongoing thing from a very early age and never technically stopping.
Without borders you'd want a rational population, capable of respecting different opinions without thinking they needed to force you to agree with them.
Now... some Anarchists want this to happen fast.
The outcome of that should be obvious. The Marxists and Communists have wanted fast revolutions and they've come to accept a lot of people would have to be eliminated that did not come around to their way of thinking.
To me this is evil.
Without addressing the human nature issues and the problem with the educational indoctrination system around us I see my fellow fans of Anarchy as proposing things that would be no less of a destructive, evil path, and perhaps more so.
The way must be prepared.
No matter how immoral and against your ethics you may see RULES and other humans being able to dictate the behavior of others the truth of the matter is that this is how the bulk of humanity thinks. They have not learned any better, and learning this is not a QUICK thing. It takes time.
Taking away borders, would make you much like a bleeding lamb stuck into a big pen of pigs. You'll be ripped apart in time.
I am all for an improved future. Call it Utopia if you will. Yet be realistic about it. Don't expect to make it to the end of the road without first walking over a bunch of other steps it takes to get there.
Quit trying to teleport. You won't be teleporting you instead will be a lemming walking off of the cliff and leading others that were foolish enough not to pay attention to their surroundings off that cliff with you.
So instead of trying to find the EASY path that doesn't require any work and just instantly gets you to your goal, why not plan and try steps to lead towards that.
Some people will see it as selling out, or propping up an immoral system. I just call it being realistic and planning a path rather than refusing to walk a path and instead wanting to just appear there with no effort.
Most things worth doing are challenging. That doesn't mean my fellow anarchists and voluntaryists are not putting forth effort. They are. Their vision for the future is also a beautiful one to me.
I just see it as ignoring the path to the temple on the mountain and instead imagining you are already standing in that temple. No matter how much you imagine you still are standing where you are and will not reach that temple without walking one step at a time.
"Are national borders to keep immigrants out or tax slaves in?"
Realistically: They are both with the exception they are not to stop immigrants. An immigrant would enter by a port of entry and knock on the door. They are there to stop the invaders that would crawl through your window, or sneak through your garage. The uninvited, the trespassers, and the invaders.
It is common these days for people to leave off "illegal" when talking about these things. That is dishonest and is more about trying to force your morality and ethics on a world that has not BECOME what you want it to be yet. It is trying to imagine the world can instantly be the "fantasy" in your mind. It can't. It takes a lot more effort and time than that.
The border is also there to keep tax slaves, debt slaves, prison industrial complex slaves, etc IN. Yet it also keeps the invaders out. Truly it is not there to stop true IMMIGRANTS that are invited in. Slave masters love willing slaves who want to come live on the plantation.
They don't want the people who climb the walls and victimize their slaves, and have no intentions of respecting property. So no. It is not to keep "immigrants" out.