The end result of that is everyone moving to the rich countries with social safety nets, those countries then collapsing or removing those safety nets, and repeat until countries decide that was a terrible idea and we’re back to having borders except everything is a mess.
Countries aren’t geographic regions. They’re collections of people. If you magically swapped the populations of South Korea and Germany, those geographic countries would change overnight to be their demographic countries.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting your country to stay at least somewhat stable in its ideals, crime levels, particular problems, etc.
the point of a social safety net is to make sure people can afford a home and healthcare. excluding non-citizens from that, yet allowing them to stay here creates exactly the kind of situations that we do not want. and as soon as people get a job they also pay taxes, healthcare and social security, at which point it seems unfair to exclude them from those benefits. so i don't see a a way how this would even work. people living here either get a job, run a business or collect benefits. if they do neither, then how would they live? only independently wealthy people could do that without having some illegal income somewhere.
i am for the elimination of borders and free movement of everyone across the world, but that requires that we help raise the standard of living everywhere to remove the incentive for people to move just for economic reasons.
> People within a country can freely move between cities
This is far from universally true, both because of legal direct constraints on internal migration and because of implicit controls which are the result of economic constraints (which are themselves part of the means by which societies are governed, whether or not they are overtly intended products of state policy.)
I’m saying it should be the same between countries as between back yards.
The same logic that justifies national government with tax-levying and rule-enforcing power also requires national borders. (ie, a group of people own this area together and will vote to determine what is done).
In a world without borders, what's to prevent some wealthy Europeans from pooling their resources to buy up huge swaths of the Congo and doing colonialism, libertarian open borders style? Governments and borders are necessary.
That is naive. The wealth disparity between nations is so great that if borders were done away with, people from wealthy nations would be able to trivially outspend people in poor countries. Once they own the land and the businesses, political power is theirs. Meanwhile the people from those poor countries might try to do the same in wealthy countries, but wouldn't have the resources for it. It would be katastroika on steroids.
Then they can be removed in two steps. First, allow people to come and work to get wealthy so they can compete with other wealthy people. Second, allow wealthy people to spend money.
> The wealth disparity between nations is so great that if borders were done away with, people from wealthy nations would be able to trivially outspend people in poor countries.
Free movement of people does not mean that you don’t have extreme taxes on high-wealth individuals that they become subject to when they move.
> Once they own the land and the businesses
You are assuming, again, in addition to free movement of people a basically capitalist economic system in every country. That you are free to move to a country and live and, if you can find a job, work there does not mean that you can simply buy land and/or control of the non-financial means of production. It may mean you are as free to do so as local residents, but it doesn’t mean anybody is free to do so.
Note, that because even slightly capitalist countries – rich or poor – tend to provide relatively free movement of capital already, whether or not they allow free movement of people, this “buyout by remote elites” is already a problem for relatively poor capitalist (or even somewhat capitalist) countries, even with border controls – you don’t need to live in a country to buy up property and businesses there, and exercise control through such ownership.
People within a country can freely move between cities but can't freely use private backyards.
We're just saying it should be the same between countries as it is between cities.