
The Case for Getting Rid of Borders - aaron695
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/get-rid-borders-completely/409501/?single_page=true
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hugh4
> No defensible moral framework regards foreigners as less deserving of rights
> than people born in the right place at the right time.

In roughly the same way that no defensible moral framework says that you
should feed your own child rather than every other child in the world. Or the
same way that no defensible moral framework says you have more of a right to
live in your own house than anyone else has to live in your house. Or in the
same way that no moral framework says that you should take and keep the money
which The Atlantic pays you for writing this article and spend it on yourself,
instead of giving it to some random stranger in the street.

Perhaps you could argue that any sensible kind of morality requires you to
believe that your own interests are entirely equivalent to everyone else's, so
you should never serve to protect your own interests. But I don't think anyone
on the entire planet believes this, on a practical level. And if you invent a
moral system that nobody is actually going to follow, it's a bad moral system,
because the point of a moral system is that people should actually be able to
follow it.

Instead, I choose to believe that yes, we have the right to serve our own
interests and protect the privileges we were born with. In my case, that
includes the privilege of being born in a rich first-world country that my
ancestors built, as well as the individual privilege of living in this nice
house which I bought. It's very sad for those people born without these sorts
of privileges (ie closer to our species' natural state) but I'm not about to
give up what I have so that billions of others can... well, not have it too,
because in an unlimited immigration world there _would_ be no rich countries,
just a series of war-riven shanty towns... but so they can have the
satisfaction of bringing me down.

Instead of letting the whole world onto our little life raft 'til it sinks,
how about we start giving them useful advice on how to inflate their own life
rafts?

