" The comment on border restrictions aged like milk. "
How so? I would be one to disagree. A world which draws arbitrary lines in sand that people cannot pass is not a free world at all would be my entire position on any border issue -- just so that is clear. Borders are a useless social construct that only serves to separate people into national identities. While the identity is not so much a problem, the identity of the nation and the protection of its borders is
The difference here is that I am a libertarian (socialist), anyone who wants to limit where people can and cannot walk on a global scale is an authoritarian -- from my perspective, this is a wildly authoritarian thing to consider normal... Considerably stressed by the fact that this only started happening over the past 100 years.
I really disagree with the first part of your comment, and I hope you can see why. I see no problem with anyone " coming here" -- I handle people on an individual basis I don't really care if they are from the same lines drawn on a picture of Earth as me. If they want to travel somewhere and live there, they should have the right to do so, especially if they are simply just wanting to integrate into that society.
On the front of big-government...
Try to think of it this way: I am selecting from two different bags of chips I want to buy, I find two identical bags of chips but one comes from a smaller store and one comes from a larger chain store. Which bag of chips is more expensive?
It is great for everything we consume to be cheap, rather than profitable -- for us. The inverse is true for the -- like 5 -- companies that produce the majority of food.
To run our society without all of us farming 1/4 of the year, some people need to be able to do jobs that don't have to do with food, so in some way we need to feed people with the food produced by others.
With larger, government-bound distribution we remove the middle man between those people. Rather than there being the worker (the farmer,) the distributor (chicken products at their most profitable possible output incorporated) and then you, there is just the farmer and the farmer's union, then you. -- At least, that would be the socialist setup.
What is the alternative? A libertarian free-market where farmers sell to random consumers with no regulation? If you know what disease is, that's probably not a good idea. Someone has to manage these things.
While food is just an example, I think it is pretty obvious that most of the things we get nowadays are not designed to be healthy, efficient, reliable, they are designed above all to be profitable. We get worse products for money because we choose to make production a free-for-all.
But matter isn't a free-for-all -- there is conservation of matter, once we mutate the state it cannot be changed back. We have a society for a reason, because in order for us to exist in this capacity and support this world-base we are required to work together. We are like Windows update: We are on a 10GB HDD and trying to install a 20GB operating system. People need to wake up, there is only one Earth, and our children will not get to see it.
Of course having a democratic worker's union attached to your government to negotiate wages solves the vast majority of these problems. Why would people being able to vote for the way that they work result in more taxes? You are assuming that because the government is bigger there are more taxes? The majority of our tax money goes to for-profit business subsidies for large corporations, border security, and war -- which are all conveniently linked together. How much more money could we possibly waste?
It is one thing if the democratic majority is choosing to waste the Earth away collectively, it is another thing entirely when a few very rich people are choosing to waste the Earth away and enslaving everyone else to " work for them, or be homeless" in the mean time.
It is fundamentally a view of democracy vs. authoritarianism -- do I think one person or a group of investors should manage how and when people work, sleep, how much they get paid? What type of job they're allowed to have for the education that my other business conglomerates sold to them?
I'm sorry, I don't think I will ever agree with the opposition on this one. But I am welcome to being convinced if the idea is genuinely pragmatically better.
