Not by a hair of my chiny chin chin....

[Watchman]

...not so hard to understand where the nation state comes from.

Given how young form of a state it is, nonsense. For most of history your "nationality" has been utterly irrelevant to what "state" you live under, that being ultimately a question of who could stake a claim on the place you live in and enforce it. "Ultima Ratio Regnum", "Final Arbiter of Kings", was apparently once the rather succint motto of the French royal artillery, which rather well sums up the gist of it...

A state is formed out of someone bringing all the kinds of little communities people otherwise live in under the aegis of one leading entity. Both the exact details of that snowballing, those component communities, and the actor assuming the leadership/authority are rather cosmetic; as is the scale of the affair. The point is, the pattern is quite universal.

Merely as one example, much of the history of Europe since the fall of Rome is about diverse ambitious actors absorbing other communities, groups and whatever under their rule; and of such budding central states trying to impose their authority internally over any mind-boggling hodgepodge of uncooperative feudal barons, free cities, Church estates, ambitious pretenders, bandit kings etc. refusing to care much about their claimed sovereignty.

The modern "Westphalian" state is more or less the end product of that lenghty and convoluted developement - of the nominal sovereign state making the claim factual inside its dominions.

[Fragony]

For most of history your "nationality" has been utterly irrelevant to what "state" you live under

Oh? WW1? Serbia?

[Watchman]

For most of history your "nationality" has been utterly irrelevant to what "state" you live under

Oh? WW1? Serbia?

Since when was "the period after WW1" synonymous with "most of history"...?

I'll grant you it explains rather a lot if your perspective's like that, though.

Just as a little reminder, the aftermath of WW1 was when the last "old skool" multi-ethnic empires in Europe - Hapsburg Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Czarist Russia - went to pieces and were replaced by a bunch of cranky little nation-states that by and large hated each others' guts as well as the sundry large ethnic minorities that "sullied the purity" of the polity...

But conversely in let's say the 17th-century Swedish Empire around the Baltic it generally mattered preciously little as such what your ethno-linguistical background was.

[Mangudai]

In a nutshell the legitimate functions of the state are "to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In my view socialism tramples on liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are drifting into abstract language here, and I doubt we can sort it out in this thread. Socialism comes in different flavors, suffice to say an example of democratic socialism gone too far is Britain circa 1975. An example problem is: Are taxi drivers allowed to charge any fare they choose, or should the prices be controlled by the government?

You mean it's not true that people die in some countries because they cannot pay for the treatment necessary to keep them alive?

In the underdeveloped part of the world people are dying at a tremendous rate because they lack medical care. That is why I accuse socialists in developed countries of being national socialists, more concerned with controlling their fellow citizens than of addressing the worst human suffering.

The US has a broken health care system by anyone's standard, but it is rare for someone to be refused life saving treatment. What is common in the US is bankruptcy due to medical bills after treatment.

I acknowledge that health care is an essential humanitarian service like education. There is a role for government to play and a role for personal responsibility. In between is a large complicated grey area. In my view basic access to health care is important enough to justify the use of force (i.e. taxes). But the government can go too far (Britain's NHS). Obama's plan promises to keep the private insurance and personal choice American's have now, and address the gaps of people who lack insurance. He explicitly promised not to adopt a plan like Canada's that denies people choices. If I understand correctly, the Canadian system has more personal choice/responsibility than most of the European plans.

[Mangudai]

Finnish law forces all workers to obey the national contracts that are drafted every few years for each profession and seniority level. The agreement becomes universally enforceable provided that more than 50% of the employees support it, in practice by being a member of a relevant trade union. The unionization rate is high (70%), especially in the middle class (AKAVA - 80%). A lack of a national agreement in an industry is considered an exception. More flexibility is generally recommended by economists for various reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland...and_government


This is a clear example of socialism trampling on individual liberty.

[Watchman]

Are you also aware it's been a mutually beneficial and on the whole extremely popular arrangement for decades ? Although the employers' organisations have been quibbling lately...

[Mangudai]

Are you also aware it's been a mutually beneficial and on the whole extremely popular arrangement for decades ? Although the employers' organisations have been quibbling lately...

You can see the people who benefit, you do not see the opportunity cost. We could get into the purely practical economic arguments, but I think there is a fundamental civil rights issue here.

When I was 19 years old I wanted to work as a carpenter in the construction industry over the summer between college terms. I called dozens of construction companies looking for a job. Needless to say, none of the union companies called me back. A few non-union companies considered me, but said it was too much hassle to hire somebody who is going to leave after 10 weeks. One guy agreed to hire me for $12/hour (about half the union wage) and no benefits. I took the job and it changed my life. The education of that job was worth more to me than a college semester. I've built on those skills and been involved in various related projects some for charity, some for money, some for friends, and some for myself. I don't work in construction now, but employers in other industries seem to be very impressed by that little gem on my resume.

Finnish law would have prevented me from having that opportunity, and nobody would even realize it.

[Fragony]

Since when was "the period after WW1" synonymous with "most of history"...?

Missed that sorry, my bad. The nation state is a double edged sword, it was the driving force that pushed european nations upward, but a failed state is misery confined.

Sorry Frag, but that's a nation-state.

I know but I don't regard that to be a bad thing. Culture is music, literature, folklore, language, those are the ties that bind

[Watchman]

Europe got quite far without the nation-state you know. The Westphalian "centralised state" - as opposed to say feudal - seems to have "cut" it quite well enough, and without the ugly ethnic cleansings and "russification" programmes...

Also, it occurs to me most of the really big names of Classical music seem to have worked in the period before nationalism turned up.

[Fragony]

Europe got quite far without the nation-state you know. The Westphalian "centralised state" - as opposed to say feudal - seems to have "cut" it quite well enough, and without the ugly ethnic cleansings and "russification" programmes...

Let's look at it's succes before looking how it can be wrong, the strong (or valid) nations have developed into democracy's and democracy's tend to leave eachother alone can't deny that. Feudalism wan't that bad either there were more rules and rights then people think, hardly anarchy. The Nation-state is a good thing, it's balance pure and simple.