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What Comes After the Nation-State, Part IV

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Clarissa

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It sounds like the new state form is all bad but that’s not true. Even if it seems like there will be more inequality in it, in reality it will be the same inequality but on a different basis.

How do you feel about the feudal system where you were either born a prince or a commoner and could do very little to change your lot? Stupid, right? But this is exactly how people 200 years from now will look at our nation-state system because it’s not that different.

In a nation-state, the circumstances of one’s birth still define destiny. This is maybe less noticeable because it occurs along state borders and not along familial bloodlines. But what is the difference, really?

The importance of borders radically diminishes in the new form of state and people become less circumscribed by the good or bad luck of being born in a certain place. We will see an enormous mobility in every direction and on every level. We are already seeing it.

12 responses to “What Comes After the Nation-State, Part IV”

  1. el Avatar
    el

    \\ In a nation-state, the circumstances of one’s birth still define destiny.

    1 is true since different nation states provide different levels of caring for their citizens. If no state will care for citizens in the new order, how will moving from one state to another help?

    Since I live in Israel, I wanted to ask what you see happening in my country. I don’t see us opening borders to large numbers of non-Jews soon. Will Israeli nation state survive for a few centuries more (at least, for one more), with all those changes happening in Europe and America, but not changing my state’s character?

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    1. aglaonika Avatar
      aglaonika

      ” If no state will care for citizens in the new order, how will moving from one state to another help?”
      I think states will compete for the people they find valuable, just like now companies compete for good employees with different perks.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        The problem is if you get the valuable people you’re going to attract a lot of the less valuable people too which means either tight border controls or massive Brazil style stratification in the US and western Europe.

        Imagine how many people would be in the UK with open borders. 100 million? 200 million? More?

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        1. Avatar
          Anonymous

          That’s my issue with fully open borders. I have no problem with a generous immigration policy, for both cognitive elites and working-class people. But I do fear that if Western countries will become too dumpy, then they could stop attracting cognitive elites from other places and also eventually cause some of their own cognitive elites to move to other, greener pastures. I want many people to improve their lives, if necessary through migration, but I also want the West to remain an attractive place for cognitive elites since they are the ones who truly shape the world in the biggest ways.

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            The US could have had the best immigrants from all over the world. Really gotten itself a mega advantage. Instead, it’s doing the exact opposite and creating an unassimilable pool if migrants in addition to the already heavy problem it has with the unassimilable segment of the black community.

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      2. aglaonika Avatar
        aglaonika

        I don’t think the UK will attract many valuable people on the long term. Leading companies esp. in the high-tech sector are less and less interested in western countries like the UK. Technology makes new forms of employment (remote work) possible, and there are zillions of intelligent, hard-working people in poorer countries. Moreover valuable, intelligent people will be pursued away by the disgust of the increasing populism, far-right and privilege-worshipping movements and ideologies, while less worthy people won’t care about that. And the UK also seems to lose its biggest advantage for businesses: it’s reasonable foreseeability. The Prime Minister regularly throws tantrums in international meetings, demands special privileges while offers nothing in return. Not really the sign of a reliable, stabile country. If the UK quits the EU, many companies will also leave, like Nissan already announced it. If there will be less value-creating people and businesses, the state will have less tax revenue, therefore less valuable people will come as immmigrants. Immigration to the UK decreases every year. It’s more and more replaced by outsourcing and the relocation of jobs.

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      3. aglaonika Avatar
        aglaonika

        I meant “therefore LESS less valuable people will come as immmigrants”.

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      4. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Aglaonika: exactly. You are spot – on.

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      5. aglaonika Avatar
        aglaonika

        Clarissa: I see it every day in the tech sector that the current hiring practices don’t care about borders at all. Leading tech companies hire worldwide, and programmers usually work from their home countries. The design sector is the same. As well as online marketing and journalism. I met people in Hungary who write for German and British magazines from home. They don’t want to immigrate, it isn’t worth them any more. I recently read a blog post where the blogger claimed he hired a web designer as a remote worker from Moldavia who is the best hire he ever made. I’m sure this tendency will reach other sectors too.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Aglaonika : yes, this is definitely the trend of the day. And you are right, it’s only getting stronger. For instance, my psychoanalyst and I live in different countries and work through Skype. I liked him more than any of the local people so I’m working with him.

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      6. Avatar
        Anonymous

        But wouldn’t that require either allowing employers to determine who gets the right to immigrate, or having some kind of merit-based immigration system, or some kind of combination of the two approaches above?

        I mean, I wouldn’t categorically be opposed to this. This is how my own family was able to immigrate to the US, after all (though winning the Diversity Visa Lottery accelerated our path to US citizenship quite significantly after we had already come over here). But it wouldn’t be open borders either.

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      There’s a very simply compromise solution for you guys (BTW, I myself am also an Israeli citizen–specifically a dual Israeli-US citizen who has lived in the US for the last 23 years): Allow anyone to immigrate to Israel on condition that they will agree to convert to Judaism beforehand. Of course, there would need to be some sort of mechanism in order to ensure that these conversions to Judaism would actually be sincere–that the converts wouldn’t simply revert back to their old religions once they would have already moved to Israel. It’s a very real risk because with the Falash Mura, AFAIK, not all of them have actually remained Jews after moving to Israel. So, somehow screening aspiring converts for the most committed ones would probably be a good idea. Maybe require all of them to undergo an Orthodox conversion to Judaism, not simply any conversion to Judaism?

      BTW, Israel already accepts large numbers of “non-Jewish” immigrants right now, but they are generally non-Jewish only in a technical sense. They have some Jewish descent and AFAIK generally identify as Jewish after moving to Israel. It’s just that halakha (Jewish religious law) does not consider them to be Jewish. Quite regretful, IMHO. The halakha in regards to this would change in an ideal world, but the rabbis are unfortunately too stubborn and cautious to actually do this.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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