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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

Why care about my parents or family? They are just people, I don't even like them as much as others. Why can't anyone be part of my family and why can't I jump to another one?

Society is a sacred part of what makes human beings human, it is why we are such a successful species. It requires cultural indoctrination and nationalism and things that definitely have an ugly side, but are also important to our function.

Your viewpoint basically assumes people have no loyalty, nationalism or responsibility to their society so they can be freely swapped with anybody.

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> Why can't anyone be part of my family

Because you won't let them.

> and why can't I jump to another one?

You can. People do sometimes, if their birth family is bad enough.

Immigrants are, by definition, people with more loyalty to another country than to the one they were born in. Why deny them that?

So if some random person wants to force himself into your family and come live in your home, you'll allow it?

Yea, if someone wants to, they can and should be able to freely swap which society they participate in.

We are successful as a species because we socialize, and there is no reason to limit that only to people who were born in specific geographic areas; that doesn’t make any sense.

It would make a lot more sense to group by shared goals and beliefs, with free movement as your goals and beliefs change.

Blind nationalistic loyalty is in no way a requirement for a successful human society.

You don't think it is easier to socialize with people with similar upbringings and culture to you? You don't think a group of people indoctrinated into a society from birth are more likely to share goals and beliefs than someone born into a different one?

Blind nationalism is bad, but absolutely no responsibility towards the society and the people that raised and support you is a crazy take. You're ideal would only work if we had 0 social programs and people were 100% responsible for providing for themselves and their loved ones, including education.

Of course you have a responsibility towards the society and the people who raised and support you.

That just doesn't involve excluding others from that society. They deserve, just as much as you, to participate (and improve!) in your society as you do.

My country only exists because people came from many other societies and brought the best parts of those societies together to create my country and its culture. I want that for everyone, if they want it for themselves.

I doubt your country was the result of a bunch of people from a bunch of different countries coming together to create a new nation. It was almost certainly a group of like minded people who all came from the same place creating an offshoot that is influenced by the original.

Especially given that the ability for global communication is newer than most existing countries.

I’ll be sure to tell all American history books that Alexander Hamilton and Lafayette (two off the top of my head because I listened to Hamilton recently, there absolutely were many many more) were actually from England and not the Caribbean and France respectively.

Are there any societies that have not exerted, or at least claimed the right to exert, control over who is and is not part of that society? The reasons for exercising that control may vary, but I can't think of or even imagine one that doesn't have this control.

The key is which things you exclude people over. A society can have values, but if those values discriminate based on aspects of a person that are outside of the person's control, that society is not operating ethically.

Western societies all value liberty, and liberty is incompatible with exclusion based on geographic origin.

All countries discriminate based on things you can never change like birth place. All countries. If they didn't they do not exist anymore. That's a poor strategy for western nation or any nation. Even the poorest countries don't allow that.

So? Nearly all countries at one point allowed slavery, refused to let women vote, and a ton of countries were ruled by an authoritarian monarchy, that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

If you let everyone in all at once then the place becomes exactly where they are fleeing from then there is no point in moving. Trying it would be the end of society. We hasn't tried killing every third baby but it is probably not a good idea regardless.

When women couldn't vote most men couldn't either. Just landholders. Slavery was an improvement on killing entire populations and authoritarian monarchy were better than savages like Genghis Khan. Whatever trouble you have with recent history go back.. things were worse.

What would happen if Canada decided to do this. Couldn't China send in 15 million people who vote to join Canada.

Huge red flags.

“Slavery was an improvement” ok, so honestly I find this insanely offensive and uncomfortably in line with some “white savior” arguments racists make, but I don’t want to be rude to you.

I guess all I can say is that I just don’t see how you can be so cruel to others like this.

Crueller was killing entire populations and removing any trace of their existence. Would you rather your family be slaves with the hope of rebellion or political issues changing or have your family be killed and body part spread all over?

Slavery is not a white/black issue although it might be for your location but the Arab slave trade was so massive and went on for so long it overshadows the trans Atlantic slave in size/scope and present day effects.

Things are not perfect today but they replaced things that were worse. That keeps happening. Why we vote for someone when we could introduce direct voting to me seems like a relic of the past that future generations will look negativity at.

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