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Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Antarctica too: if you can get there, you can step onto the ice.

There's a pattern here: the only places with open borders are places where you wouldn't really want to live anyway, while the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable.

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Svalbard is an amazing, humbling place in terms of nature. The fact that once you leave town, for hundreds of kilometers in any direction there are zero humans, zero cellular reception, just nothing but you, the ice, and maybe the bears. I went there one winter and spent a week without sunlight. It was the first time in my life I went a few days without seeing the sun. A few photos:

https://www.facebook.com/dheera/media_set?set=a.101010917929...

True, I wouldn't want to live there long term -- the limitations of a small town and no road access to other towns could get depressing after a while. But it was definitely an experience being there for a week.

>...for hundreds of kilometers in any direction there are zero humans...

I think you've argued directly for the previous poster's point no?

I was looking over pictures of this place last night actually. There's a national park there too which looks other worldly.

Then of course I looked at flights and it's about 40hrs of travel and $1300 so probably not making that trip in this lifetime.

Yeah so the trick I used is to find a cheap deal to Oslo, and then use Star Alliance miles to get the Oslo-Longyearbyen segment as a reward flight on SAS. It counts as a domestic EU flight as far as mileage goes.

FYI unlike mainland Norway's national parks, you cannot "randomly" go to the national parks in Svalbard. Svalbard is almost completely devoid of infrastructure (no roads outside the couple of towns) so you'd have to make a completely self-sufficient expedition across arctic terrain to get there. You also need someone with rifle skills in case of a polar bear attack, and it's required to carry a rifle and register all plans with the Governor of Svalbard to leave the town. It's possible, but definitely needs a properly-equipped team -- not a casual trip.

If you can make it, you should...

I was lucky enough to go there for a trip a couple of years ago and it was incredible, in all the ways that others have described.

Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, and Netherlands are some of the most prosperous countries in the world, and they have an open border with 28 other countries — some of which can be easily classified as very poor and undesirable places.

For example, Bulgaria's GDP per capita is $9,272 and Luxembourg's is $114,340. Yet, there's full freedom of movement between the two countries.

While Bulgaria is part of the EU, it's not part of the Schengen zone, meaning they don't have truly "open borders".

There's full freedom of movement, so it's an open border. The Schengen zone is no border.

it’s not an “open border”. on the contrary. there are actual physical borders between schengen countries and the rest of the eu. whenever you enter/exit schengen you have to pass border control.

If your passport shows you're an EU citizen, you're allowed to enter. So it's an open border for EU citizens.

that’s not how schengen borders work. it’s not an open border. it’s an actual border. and yes, you can be banned from travelling into schengen even if you have an eu passport.

None of the 28 EU countries can be classified as poor, let alone very poor ...

I should have added, "relative to those countries".

And these undesirable places are ... ?

Ireland is not in Schengen

>the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable

cheeky counterexample: North Korea

North Korean border control is there to stop people from leaving, not entering.

I presume it's also to keep out subversive foreign agents. And reporters. And people whose mere presence is suggestive of Western capitalism and therefore subversive. Something like that.

i.e. basically everyone

Uhm, no: if you try to cross the border in they will shoot you just the same.

Pay a bit of money in China and you'll have a visa in no time. That's doesn't work with, say, Switzerland, at least not with a similar amount of money.

Most countries (including Switzerland) have some form of investor's visa which is basically an official way to pay for a visa.

Which is a very different thing and will set you back ~1m, not a few hundred.

Visas are still for sale, they're just more expensive (like so many things) in the US and Europe.

My aunt was forced to leave China as her husband's work there (for some multinational) was done. Instead, she started her own business (not for the money, but to have a presence which 'stimulates the local economy'). Now she's allowed to stay in China.

Argentina strikes me as a strong combination of "desirable" and "open". Virtually anyone can become a citizen, and it's a prosperous enough country, currency decline notwithstanding.

For people in the US and Europe, South America is more remote than Svalbard

For those in the US, it might be 1-2 affordable flights and in the same timezone? Someone elsewhere in these comments suggested Svalbard would be 40 hours and $1200+.

“it's a prosperous enough country” define prosperous please. from my knowledge argentina is a financial basket case since a century ago.

A century ago it was the world's 10th wealthiest state per capita. Right now it tops the list of the upper middle-income group, so is almost a high-income country, and per capita is richer than, for example, Russia.

Exactly. It went from a rich nation to a poor nation, to default, back to poor and free markets, then to progress then again back to the IMF. It’s a classical basket case country.

”where you wouldn't really want to live anyway”

When reading the article, I wondered whether global warming might change that. It won’t (fully) flood (highest mountains are over 1 km high), and has ”has an Arctic climate, although with significantly higher temperatures than other places at the same latitude.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitsbergen)

It probably will stay on the ‘too cold for most’ side, though, and the long winter night won’t go away.

> while the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable

Curiously, this seems to me to be a 20th century invention.

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