# Do away with borders
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [September 11, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238 "2014-09-11T21:15:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/21 "2014-09-12T02:12:30Z")
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> Do you think the partition of India would have been any less bloody if there was a neutral zone between India and Pakistan?
Nope. They’d just have to deal with the shenanigans of the Romulans on top of everything else.
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### Author:  [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/22 "2014-09-12T03:11:19Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> Why not do away with borders in favour of anarchy zones ? Let the anarchists finally do away with states by letting them live in the space between states and act as intermediaries ?
What, exactly, would they mediate?
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### Author:  [@Bouncer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bouncer)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/23 "2014-09-12T03:20:35Z")
> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Morbid curiosity.
>
> I actually think an anarchy zone would be an interesting social experiment.
Err… not working out well for Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or any other failed state that I’m aware of.
[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failed\_states\_index\_2012\_interactive](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failed_states_index_2012_interactive)
Regards,
-Bouncer-
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### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/24 "2014-09-12T03:23:56Z")
> [@Lemur866](#):
>
> All chaps are assless, that’s what makes them chaps and not pants.
Chaps have their asses cut out? That must hurt like buggery!
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/25 "2014-09-12T03:31:49Z")
> [@Lemur866](#):
>
> Here it is in 2014, and we’ve got a lot fewer zones than I thought we’d have when I was a kid. Forget your flying car, I was promised zones. Forbidden zones, neutral zones, phantom zones, danger zones, dead zones. And all we got are some crappy time zones and free trade zones.
Look, the Anarchy Zone is just a name, like the Death Zone or the Zone of No Return. All the Zones have names like that in the Galaxy of Terror!
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### Author:  [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/26 "2014-09-12T03:45:19Z")
So now bands of criminals can stop and harass international commerce by holding up cross border trade? That’s just great. (I know most trade is by sea, but an anarchy would be a perfect place for a pirate lair).
You might see some companies try to horizontally drill for oil or water from borders of real countries into the zone, but I can’t think of any other economically profitable activity besides dumping trash and nuclear waste. Perhaps organ markets, drugs, weapons and other prohibited goods could be sold there. But there’s really no point in trying to make a living if a crackhead with a gun can shoot you and take your stuff without consequence.
The only way an anarchy could work is if it was fenced it by a real country, e.g. _Escape from New York_. And countries don’t just want chaos on their borders, so they’re not going to let that happen.
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### Author:  [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/27 "2014-09-12T06:14:43Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> Why not do away with borders in favour of anarchy zones ? Let the anarchists finally do away with states by letting them live in the space between states and act as intermediaries ?
You’ve just replaced 1 border with 2 borders and an anarchy zone in between. You haven’t done away with anything. You’ve doubled the number and let someone (anarchy zone) put up toll booths (act as intermediaries) between all transactions.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/28 "2014-09-12T07:13:49Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Yep. Tell the anarchists where they can live and what their new jobs are.
> That’ll work.
Well, obviously not tell them all individually - that would take too long - set up some sort of dialogue with their governing bodies. That’ll work.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/29 "2014-09-12T07:16:54Z")
> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Morbid curiosity.
> I actually think an anarchy zone would be an interesting social experiment.
Move to [Christiania](http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/copenhagen/sightseeing/alternative-christiania) then, but for some reason there are crime warnings for that area.
Now, what I want to know is, would countries currently in the Schengen zone (where the lines on the floor are mostly viewed as a tourist attraction) be expected to replace their “point where you take a picture” with an anarchy area? Because frankly, that would suck. Where would the anarchy area at the Malmö bridge be placed? The first exit as you get to Denmark is for the airport, I don’t think Danish authorities would be amused if a tent city went up on the tarmac…
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/30 "2014-09-12T13:12:54Z")
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> Look, the Anarchy Zone is just a name, like the Death Zone or the Zone of No Return. All the Zones have names like that in the Galaxy of Terror!
Exactly. And “Death Zone” is really an exaggeration.
It’s really closer to just a “sector”.
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### Author:  [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/31 "2014-09-12T13:50:46Z")
We already have this. It’s called “Florida.”
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### Author:  [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/32 "2014-09-12T15:06:45Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> What, you mean like live _in_ the Rio Grande?
Yes, and in all that space around Hawaii as well!
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/33 "2014-09-12T16:07:00Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> Well, obviously not tell them all individually - that would take too long - set up some sort of dialogue with their governing bodies. That’ll work.
If only those anarchists would get organized.
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/34 "2014-09-12T16:33:48Z")
Actuallly, the opposite might work. For example, the city of Chuy, on the border of Brazil and Uruguay. There are 9,000 people living in Chuy, Uruguay, and 6,000 in Chui, Brazil, and everyone in both towns if free to wander about anywhere, back and forth across the main street through the town, which is the international border. Customs and immigration posts for both Brazil and Uruguay are a couple of miles out of town on the highway.
There is no anarchy, Chuy is a perfectly peaceful town, well administered and economically thriving.
[http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/hameandem/images/chuy.JPG](http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/hameandem/images/chuy.JPG)
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/35 "2014-09-12T17:49:14Z")
> [@](#):
>
> So now bands of criminals can stop and harass international commerce by holding up cross border trade? That’s just great. (I know most trade is by sea, but an anarchy would be a perfect place for a pirate lair).
A promising line of thought, sounds like Burroughs
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/36 "2014-09-12T17:50:18Z")
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> There is no anarchy, Chuy is a perfectly peaceful town, well administered and economically thriving.
Anarchy isn’t the same as violent disorder. People forget that.
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### Author:  [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/37 "2014-09-12T17:55:28Z")
> [@](#):
>
> You’ve just replaced 1 border with 2 borders and an anarchy zone in between. You haven’t done away with anything. You’ve doubled the number and let someone (anarchy zone) put up toll booths (act as intermediaries) between all transactions.
You hit on the central point which I was trying to uncover from my own thinking - you leave the border undefined. You have two states either side of the anarchy zone, yes, but nobody in the state knows exactly where the border is - it’s fuzzy. It’s fuzzy and it can’t be fought over because you don’t exactly know where your troops should go, and they’d be fucked by the anarchists anyway.
Borders, as mathematicians know, are impossible to truly define anyway in our fractal world, so this state of fuzzy borderness is perfectly apt for our times.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/38 "2014-09-12T18:04:32Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> You hit on the central point which I was trying to uncover from my own thinking - you leave the border undefined. You have two states either side of the anarchy zone, yes, but nobody in the state knows exactly where the border is - it’s fuzzy. It’s fuzzy and it can’t be fought over because you don’t exactly know where your troops should go, and they’d be fucked by the anarchists anyway.
>
> Borders, as mathematicians know, are impossible to truly define anyway in our fractal world, so this state of fuzzy borderness is perfectly apt for our times.
You think your trained “anarchists”(you still haven’t explained how you’ve convinced them to stay there and take the job of border guards, by the way), will stop one country from crossing the border into another country? Since the other country won’t give a shit about those so-called “anarchists” the first country will just slaughter them without opposition.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/39 "2014-09-12T18:15:50Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#):
>
> Anarchy isn’t the same as violent disorder. People forget that.
Anarchy inevitably leads to violent disorder. Anarchists forget that.
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-away-with-borders/698238/40 "2014-09-12T18:18:40Z")
But what happens when Tony Soprano moves into your anarchy zone and threatens to shoot you in the face unless you pay him regular tribute? You no longer have an anarchy zone, you have a tribal government ruled by Tony Soprano.
This is why there are no anarchy zones on planet Earth. There are plenty of places with only a few people. Move out to the Canadian wilderness by yourself and you need never see another human being for the rest of your life. There’s your anarchy zone. There are plenty of other places were government officials/crime lords never bother to go. You’re free to move there.
But if you need a promise from the fascists not to ruin your anarchy zone before you can have a for-real anarchy zone, well, the fascists aren’t going to do any such thing. So where does that put us?
If everyone could get along with each other without being assholes, any system of governance would work. Absolute dictatorship would work, because the dictator wouldn’t be a jerk about it and would listen to the people and try to make things better. Democracy would work because the voters wouldn’t be jerks about it. Anarchy would work because people would just help each other.
Every system of government we human beings have ever had is either a symptom of the jerks trying to ruin it for everyone else, or us trying to prevent the jerks from ruining it for us. And often combined at the same time, we’re trying to prevent those guys from being jerks to us, at the same time we’re being huge jerks to them. Governments aren’t something imposed on humanity by malevolent outside forces, but are the natural emergent behavior of millions of people trying to simultaneously get along with each other, protect themselves from those they can’t get along with, and screw over certain other people.
If you can’t stop me and my buddy, and his buddies and their buddies, and so on and so on, from banding together and ruining your anarchic utopia, then you’ve just recapitulated the last couple thousand years of human history.
The last time human beings lived in the sort of society that anarchists seem to want was before the invention of agriculture. Small bands of hunter-gatherers set up shop, and resolve disputes among themselves, except when they can’t and violence breaks out. Turns out anarchic hunter-gatherers resolved disputes via violence a lot more often than modern people.
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