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The EU is an ongoing and succeeding effort to replicate the United States Federal government in Europe. Scotland will eventually wind up having as much say as New Hampshire does in very important matters, such as control of its borders and agriculture policy.

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"control of its borders"

I'm pleased to say that we don't seem to have quite the same obsession in Scotland with keeping immigrants out as a lot of people in the UK. In fact the SNP is rather keen on encouraging immigration.

I'd far rather have the right to live and work anywhere in the EU than be trapped in the UK with Boris Johnson as PM running second hand UKIP policies.

Control of borders doesn't imply "everyone keep out." It just means that the government reserves the right to keep people out.

Kinda like a trademark, actually. One has to "defend" a trademark in order to keep it, which can either take the form of an overeager legal department, or you can just find all the people who are using your trademark and give them explicit permission to do so with the caveat that you may rescind that permission at your discretion (like Hormel did with the word Spam).

'Control of borders doesn't imply "everyone keep out."'

You should have a read of the Daily Mail.

>I'd far rather have the right to live and work anywhere in the EU //

https://www.gov.uk/working-abroad, "You have the right to work in any country in the European Economic Area (EEA) without a work permit if you’re a UK citizen."

So presumably you'd vote No to maintain this right and stay in the EU? I'm confused as that seemed contrary to the rest of your comment.

Parts of the UK could easily be overwhelmed by open borders with the rest of the Schengen Area. Perhaps Scotland will fair better, maybe it's less attractive to migrants. What is certain though is, with a Yes vote, that unless the rUK vote to become part of the Schengen agreement there will need to be border controls between Scotland and the Common Travel Area (CTA).

> Parts of the UK could easily be overwhelmed by open borders with the rest of the Schengen Area.

This is nonsensical scaremongering. The UK's refusal to join Schengen keeps out a handful of illegal migrants, most of whom would be caught and deported anyway. If the far greater number of French[1] and Eastern European migrants who live and work here courtesy of the EU's "free movement of labour" clauses haven't "overwhelmed" anybody,[2] then a few extra illegals are hardly going to tip the balance.

[1] - Oddly, nobody ever complains about the huge numbers of French migrants to the UK. It's almost as though there's an element of racial discrimination somewhere...

[2] - Boston, Lincs. is often cited as being overwhelmed by Eastern migrants. But even the BNP can only find an uptick in driving offences to complain about: http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/regional/stop-press-boston-crime-...

"In fact the SNP is rather keen on encouraging immigration. I'd far rather have the right to live and work anywhere in the EU than be trapped in the UK with Boris Johnson as PM running second hand UKIP policies."

The SNP proposed plan is to encourage skilled workers (from outside the EU) using a controlled points-based system. That's quite a different policy position to the EU where EU citizens can freely live and work in any EU country. I doubt many people in the UK would object to the skilled immigration policy the SNP proposes. But, of course, we need workers of all skill levels. I agree that the rhetoric from the UKIP and Conservative party on this subject (and the toxic British Press) is often alarmist and inflammatory.

Control of borders is practically the definition of a nation. If you don't have a say in who comes in, you aren't a nation.

Restricting freedom of movement and labour is morally unconscionable. I’m certain we will look back to that in a few centuries with horror.

At least the EU was able to reduce that somewhat in some places. Sure, the outer border of the EU is horrific, but inside it’s at least somewhat ok. A world with borders is an evil and oppressive world. We should always work towards removing them all for everyone.

(Yes, I know about Schengen and the differences between Schengen and the EU. However, be assured that Schengen would not exist without the EU. It’s just that achieving consensus is hard, so some want out of some things and some want it. That’s why it’s always so complicated and hard. EU is a convenient shorthand, because I don’t just mean visa free travel, I also mean being able to live and work in other places.)

That might work if all countries had similar culture, values, standards of living and agreements over things like how healthcare should be paid for. In reality, if a first world country opens it's borders to the rest of the world , even if the agreement is reciprocal then most of the traffic is going one way as people try and converge on the source of wealth. We already have this problem within the UK when trying to cram so many people into London.

It also raises questions like, if I can live and work wherever I want why should I only be able to vote in one fixed arbitrary place?

Yes, and abolishing slavery was also hard … (I do explicitly not want to compare the severity and impact of borders to the severity and impact of slavery or even racism today. It’s an analogy.)

I know there are practical issues in the way that prevent abolishing borders. I know this won’t happen quickly, probably not during my lifetime, probably not in a couple centuries, but working towards a world where this is possible seems like a worthwhile goal to me. Why should people be arbitrarily bound to the place they were born? It’s insanity and highly unethical.

I look forward to hearing your tune when 2,000 illiterate indians show up in your neighborhood and start publicly defecating all over the place. http://www.poo2loo.com/

> Restricting freedom of movement and labour is morally unconscionable.

Why? I'm in favor of more open borders than most nations have, but I don't see a moral imperative to let outsiders in.

Control of borders is practically the definition of a nation in the sense of Westphalian Sovereignty, but arguing against that is Stross' whole point.

He never really makes a coherent point about how his smaller states will handle borders. Bringing up Westphalia in this particular context is silly because it's an eternal truth. If your people don't control access to the land, you will lose control of the land. This was true ten thousand years ago and it's true of Tibetans now.

An "eternal truth"? It's called Westphalian Sovereignty because it's the result of the eponymous historical event, prior to which extranational forces played a huge role in the internal politics of states.

What point are you making? A chimp can understand this need to control land access. Saying "westphalia" over and over sheds no light. Control over immigration and land use was not invented by 17th century european diplomats if that's what you think. To the extent nations failed to control their borders in the past they were simply unfortunately weak nations.

I think I'm making exactly the point I just made in the comment that you responded to: that prior to the Peace of Westphalia, extranational forces played a part in local policy. Today, states and national borders dominate policy, but in pre-Westphalian society, borders were fluid, and the church often played as great a role as local governments. One day Aquitaine was English, the next French, &c.

Perhaps what Stross is intimating is that we'd be better off if Wales was Wales, Normandy Normany, &c, and that instead of the church, we devise some more sensible extranational force to implement the social contract across all those small nations.

Borders were not fluid and influenced by outside powers for real nations. Nobody moved China's or Rome's or Assyria's borders until they lost battles. Or Prussia's for that matter. Westphalia was an agreement within a closely related ethnic and cultural zone (the crusader pals) for superpowers to not to push around the weaker nations quite so much. It's a temporal european footnote that attached some semantics to the specifically european concept of "the state" (not "nation"). In the broader reality of human history, a nation is a related group of people who can drive people off their land and keep them out, or at least subjugate others to dhimmitude. If you can't do that you will inevitably be conquered. Consider texas for a recent example. No magical international bureaucracy can prevent that in the long run.

Note however that EU != Schengen zone. (Though there's more to control of borders than simply crossing borders without immigration checks.) In fact, UK border checks are relatively strict even for other EU citizens.

The strictest UK border check I've gone through in a few years was putting my (EU) passport into an automated passport reader and looking into a camera for 5 seconds.

That's an interesting choice of example state given New Hampshire's significant role in primary elections.

The tendency of a few states (including a handful of very small ones) to get disproportionate attention at the federal level (and sometimes accompanying pork-barrel policies) is a bug rather than a feature of the US system.

There's nothing inherent in the American election system that requires New Hampshire and Iowa to get the attention they do. That's strictly an artifact of how the parties have chosen to schedule their primary calendars; New Hampshire and Iowa happened to be put first in the schedule, and people started paying more attention to them on the theory that winning these early primaries could start a snowball effect of support in the later ones.

Either party could choose any time it wants to reshuffle their primary calendar and move some other states before NH and IA, or to hold all their primaries at once on the same day. There's just not much pressure on them to do so, so inertia keeps them where they are.

The state parties set the dates. Of course the national parties can influence that, but there is no cohesive group mandating the dates.

A not very talked about aspect of U.S. politics is how much influence peddling is possible at that level.

But they still can't make treaties with foreign nations, raise a military, mint coins, or any of several other things generally associated with sovereign nations.

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