-{Okay, so this post directly addresses one of the previously forbidden subjects. “Comment with care” is hopefully assumed. As long as we avoid conversations about how terrible Mexicans and Mexican immigrants are, I think we’ll be okay. I mention Mexicans because it’s hard not to on these subjects, but there are greater abstract notions at play here.}-

Eric Liu has a worthwhile piece on global citizenship. I’d excerpt it but there’s no really good starting point that doesn’t take five paragraphs or more. He lists three kinds. First is global consciousness for one’s actions, which is laudable but not meaningfully citizenship. The second is more internationalism in the form of institutions, which is useful but limited in scope. The third is economic globalism, which is essentially the self-justification of the elites.

I find the notion of global citizenship unsettling. To be of everywhere is to be of nowhere. It’s nice to think that the world is of one, but… it’s just not true. States and populations within the US have conflicting interests, at times, but nothing compared to the US and China or even the US and Japan. Even countries with relatively friendly relations, like the US and India, are as much worlds apart figuratively as literally. There are times I wonder if the US has too much diversity (beyond checkboxes for race and religion) and too many conflicting interests to be a coherent nation. But the world? I don’t understand how you can have solidarity with everybody, which global citizenship implies.

The third kind that he refers to strikes me as the most problematic and potentially nefarious even. Or maybe what I am thinking about is a tangent off of that. There is a natural order of things with alliances and connections and associations. A stateless nation wouldn’t be the world as one. Rather, it would mean that Silicon Valley can more easily associate itself with Tokyo without being anchored to Fresno. It’s the forced association of borders that sends state tax dollars from New York City to Rochester and federal dollars from New York City to Minot. A lot of people – the sorts of people who ordinarily would think such thing tasteless – take a look at the overall money flow and thing that cutting off those ingrates would be awesome. Maybe they’d learn their place and all that.

But that’s just talk. Sometimes geared more towards scoring political points than anything else. As a practical matter, though, considering residents of Orissa no more or less in league with you than the people in Idaho is a fantastic way for neither of them to get the support they need. From a libertarian standpoint, the answer is “So?” From a liberal standpoint – and it’s more often than not liberalism from whence these attitudes come – it makes any social safety net (for instance) unworkable. We have to view ourselves as Americans, and take care of one another to a far greater extent that we take care of people from elsewhere. Global citizenship makes that impossible. On the other side of the world, it means that New Delhi has to make itself a colleague of the other world cities and that means it cannot be in league with rural Orissa in any real sense.

Which itself could be considered the point. Pull the people out of Idaho and (back) to California and the cities therein. As we all know, cities are superior anyway. Without the erection of borders – either formal or by driving up the cost of living and regulations to prevent people from living too close together and pricing them out – the same problems occur. If we can’t guarantee a certain standard of living of 113,000 Mexicans in Mexico, for instance, it is only a little bit easier of they all immigrated here en masse. One way or another, they’d be left behind. To repeat myself: Treating Mexicans and New Mexicans as equivalent (“We’re all citizens of the world”) would be the end to Navajo Nation. We can take care of them – to the minimalist extent that we do – precisely because we favor them over others.

The erection of national borders separating New Mexico from Mexico may be quite unfair in some sense. Someone from New Mexico can pick up and move to Texas and be a recognized citizen. Someone who works harder, is more ambitious, and is smarter who happens to be born in Chihuahua meanwhile can’t get here without some luck (family members already crossed over, for instance) or a whole lot more wherewithal (sneaking across). We can say that since the latter is smart and ambitious and a hard worker that he should be allowed over, but once we’re picking and choosing who we bring over, we’re recognizing the importance of borders.

We can open our borders and that may or may not be the end of the Republic. But if it’s not the end of the Republic, it is the end to virtually any guarantee of any standard of living supported by most Americans (and all but few liberals).

Another study about how file-sharers actually consume more music than their peers. These studies are no longer surprising. What still needs to be demonstrated is the nature of the relationship. It’s not surprising that there is an overlap of afficionados – questions remain about the impact that file-sharing has on an individual level. If any.

Though it didn’t take, I did watch Men of a Certain Age for a few episodes. My favorite part was when one of the main characters, on his hospital bed, said that he had to quit his job even though he didn’t know what he wanted to come after. To which she responded, are you crazy you can’t quit your job!. I appreciate more honest looks at the subject rather than the polyannaish one we always get.

Jon Last writes a review of a book about Marvel Comics that almost makes me want to read it.

Should we export higher education? Or rather, start opening universities wide open to foreigners and pocket maybe $150B? I dunno. My main concern is that it wouldn’t necessarily be a positive-sum thing. If foreign students are more money-making than domestic ones, would they increase capacity or simply start shoving Americans off.

A guide to writing a novel in 30 days.

It’s slightly dated, but I found this story about one-room schools interesting. I’ve driven by some. I’d be interested to know how they compare to the other schools. Personally, I’m glad I went to a school of 4,000 instead of a school of 4.

An intriguing (by which I mean “it says something that has repercussions I find favorable”) argument: anti-texting laws increase accidents.

The Hoover Institute says there is no Resource Curse. The Resource Curse being that being resource-rich leads to poor governance.

The Economist on how scientists are looking more and more on how genes influence political outlook and behavior. This does run contrary to my social politics model (in which sociology has as much to say as psychology), but only somewhat.