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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day And to think that a little over a 100 years ago, passports were almost unknown until an international assembly of governments decided to impose them. There’s just no stopping a bad idea whose time has come. Not without a guillotine, anyway.
– Commenter ‘tehag‘
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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“There’s just no stopping a bad idea whose time has come. Not without a guillotine, anyway.”
More cuts needed, I see.
One hundred years ago the countries asking for an entry visa was considered “barbaric” … and everybody pointed the finger at Russia. Now we are all barbarians …
It’s a shame we’ve lost guillotines. Serious term limits.
In 1802 Johann Gottfried Seume walked from Leipzig to Sicily.
He needed many passports often obtained from arbitrary officials after paying dearly, both fee and bribe.
That’s just one example. There is much more proof that passports were a common requirement in the past.
You all got me curious:
RainerK, what you are describing is in fact a visa regardless of what some official at the time might have called it, not a passport. The differences are not as insignificant as you might think.
I don’t know what the difference is. Can you enlighten me?
Yeah, well, a little over a 100 years ago there were few, if any, welfare states either. Except for large cities, most newcomers to a town were treated with some suspicion until their bona fides were established.
A visa is an arrangement you make to enter a country. Even a stateless person can obtain one by directly applying to the jurisdiction. It is analogous to asking a house owner if you can enter.
A passport is a document representing yourself as a subject of a specific nation, and when presented upon entry another nation it colours the nature of the relationship as you are in effect treated as a representative of that nation.
The two are often conflated but are actually quite different things.
I have not needed a passport until recently. The last time I went abroad was as a child on my dad’s passport.
I attempted to fill in the application today. In the end I tore it up in frustration. The name/surname layout requirements change several times during the form and by the end mine was full of mistakes. They also seem to want information that I have no way of knowing, such as my dead mother’s passport number. To top it all off they want to charge me nearly £80 for the privilege of being able to leave this “free” society of ours.
Oh yes, and I need to submit to an interview to prove I am who I say I am. Why isn’t getting a driving license this hard?
And I’m studying for a doctorate, God help people of mediocre literacy who try to fill the damn thing in.
I suppose I’d better go get another one from the post office and try again, or I’ll never get out of this place.
JD: Pro-tip, get two 😀
I guess the question is, if we didn’t have passports today, would they need to be invented? What important function do they actually perform?
One thing to bear in mind is that things were definitely different (though possibly they shouldn’t be) when the majority of foreign travel was done by the rich, diplomats and merchants. In the age of 80GBP flights, do they make more sense? Is terrorism a valid concern? (I would think not. Thosewith intent to do harm will find a way to travel)
John Dacre
Good point.
In Seume’s travelogue it is not clear if his passes were simply travel permits or also ID including his Prussian nationality.
Is terrorism a valid concern? (I would think not. Thosewith intent to do harm will find a way to travel)
This is the dumbest thing I have read here for quite a while.
Sure, they might find a way to travel. But will they find a way to travel that can be flown into a building to cause an explosion? A way to travel in which the slightest commotion or error could send 500 innocent people plunging to their deaths?
Really dude, take a good hard look at yourself.
Really dude, take a good hard look at yourself.
Consider for a moment that fear is fostered to provide justification to control, then do likewise.
Consider for a moment a large hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan, and that the last time an episode with that scale butcher’s bill happened in this country was a century and a half prior during a war, and then understand why some of us are not going to just write terrorism off as a myth invented to “provide justification to control”
understand why some of us are not going to just write terrorism off as a myth invented to “provide justification to control”
I didn’t say anything about terrorism. I said that fear was being cultivated, and they seem to have done an excellent job.
If you adopt the stance of “I’m all for increased individual liberty, but not right now because of bogeyman X” then you will never be for individual liberty.
There is always something to be a afraid of, governments make sure of it.
Sunfish, didn’t the 19 individuals in question all have valid passports?
Hmm. In a libertarian world, you would not need any border controls. A libertarian nation in a non-libertarian world would require them, as do non-libertarian nations in a non-libertarian world.
I don’t understand why many libertarians are believers in opening borders in the current political reality. Look at it this way; libertarians generally believe in property rights, and the right to deny access by property owners. Nations are collective territories with a collective ownership. The land of America within its borders is owned by the American people. They are under no obligation to admit anybody, any more than a farmer should be obligated to let me ramble across his land.
Under the current system, there are two levels of property ownership; the national level and the personal level. Nations maintain their property rights by balance of power, treaty and force. All the land of Britain is owned by “Britain”; in fact by the Queen. All the land of America is owned by “America”; by the American people collective. Personal “owernship” of land isn’t ownership at all, it is a licence to use land granted by the national ownership level, that may be revoked (compulsory purchase, eminent domain). No British citizen truly “owns” land, and neither does any American citizen. Landowners simply have a granted right to use.
Propertarian Anarchists dream of true land ownership. That is, individuals genuinely owning land. If that comes to pass, the “national” level reduces to the “personal” level and each landowner will enforce his borders, denying anyone he cares to the right to enter his land. The landowner becomes the nation. (He also needs a private army, or treaties to enforce his borders, since there’s now no other way to do so, and any other property owner who wishes to steal his land will be free to do so unless stopped by military force, as with the national level currently).
So, border controls are an inherent part of property ownership. I thus can’t comprehend why libertarians do this strange thing of declaring that they have a right to go and wander all over France or China or wherever, and the French or Chinese shouldn’t be allowed to stop them, or that Britain can’t stop Americans or Somalians arriving and staying. On what basis?
Nations are collective territories with a collective ownership
No they’re not. Try and enact your rights on the “collective” and see what happens. You and I have no rights over public land that cannot be taken away. Indeed, you and I have no rights over private land that cannot be taken away.
The nation state approach to land ownership is akin to serfdom.
In any case, I have no objection to private individuals denying access to whoever they please. I do object to the rulers of nations collectively deciding that I need “travel papers” to go about my business. Travel papers that are expensive, and can be revoked at will.
It is not just about confirming your identity.
Yes you do. Vote for a change in the rules at an election. As it stands, it seems the rest of the collective favour the current ruleset. Sorry.
Indeed. That’s why I don’t support propertarian anarchism (or anarchism of any kind). It’s the same system.
The point I made is that nations do nothing that propertarians don’t demand the individual right to do. Nations are just landowners; right now I’m on Mrs Queen’s land, and have to do as I’m told. As such, I’m rather lucky that us tenants got her to agree to a democracy, poor quality as it is. The monarchy didn’t have to do that; after all, they own it and, as property owners, can make whatever rules they like. So, as they allow a degree of democracy, I as a tenant actually get more influence than I would under hard propertarianism, in which case I’d only get the “if you don’t like it, leave” choice.
If you don’t like it, raise an army and get your own property.
🙂
Exactly.
You argument seems to revolve around the, “Sure these are chains, but I like them!” principle. Which is fine. What isn’t fine is that you expect me to live under the same oppression.
In any case, point me to the nearest election that addresses property rights and I will vote accordingly.
Returning to the question at hand – by what right to governments get together and decide that the citizenry need to purchase a particular piece of paper to travel?
Jaded, where did Ian say that he likes the chains? It sounds like he is merely stating the facts as they stand right now.
I don’t like things being this way at all, I’m just saying that’s how things are. This problem won’t go away until there’s a global libertarian polity. I have a feeling that won’t happen next week. Neither do I expect you to do anything. I’m just saying that that’s what you have to live under.
You can make any election address property rights. You can stand for election, on a property rights platform, and try to get the other voters to agree with you.
“by what right to governments get together and decide that the citizenry need to purchase a particular piece of paper to travel?”
Well, by the propertarian right. They own all the land in the world, and got together to create a system for admitting peolpe to their particular parcels of it. At the global level, the world is already a propertarian anarchy, and is thus a very good illustration of why that won’t serve the masses of the people like you and me. Property owners can do what they like. That’s good for them, not so good for us tenants.
So, they have the right to do that because they own the land. Or from a USA type perspective, they did it on behalf of the citizens who, collectively own the USA at the federal level.
I’m afraid I don’t personally subscribe to the traditional anarcho-libertarian views on property ownership. And you’re right, governments do act as though they own the land, even when you posses the title deeds.
I don’t think war and revolution are the solution though. So much of the system we live under requires our unthinking consent. En masse non-violent refusal would gum it up something awful.
The question would be how far would our rulers be willing to go to cling to power. That I don’t know.
I take a simple view that a liberal polity can be easily achieved when the people want it. In democracies, there is no need for violence. Voting suffices. The problem we have is that most of our fellows do not want a liberal polity. If Mr Cameron had stood for election on a libertarian platform, most of my fellow countrymen would not have voted for him.
It has to be about changing minds. If we ever got enough support to mount a revolution, we wouldn’t need one.
Aliasa is quite correct.
In the latter part of the Victorian Age (“those were such dark times my children”) the only major European powers that demanded passports were Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
A radical rightwing person (sarcasm alert) who went by the name of “Lenin” remaked on the freedom of everywhere else in Europe (not that thought there might be something good about the system that produced this freedom of course). Just as he noted that, of the major powers, “only Russia and Turkey practice religious persecution”.
However, the French Revolutionaries (at least the dominant factions) would have loved passports (they DID lover passports) so saying Madam G. is a solution is mistaken.
“It has to be about changing minds. If we ever got enough support to mount a revolution, we wouldn’t need one.”
Nice sentiment, Ian B, but I don’t think it’s accurate. Most revolutions throughout history have been conducted by a small but determined group, maybe as much as 20% of the population (and probably less). The majority of the people are basically indifferent, just keeping their heads down until the shooting stops so they can go back to their lives under the rule of whoever prevailed. 20% could be more than enough for a successful revolution, but it’s not enough to win an election.
Revolutions that win like that then have to enforce their power with extreme violence. That’s not an option for Libertarians; any such regime would by definition and in practise not be Libertarian. Ergo, we need a large majority of the population to prefer liberty and demand it and vote for it.
I have to agree with Ian there: violent revolt is the last resort to be saved for extreme circumstances, where violence has already been initiated by someone else to such an extent that more violence is likely to occur either way. Otherwise it has to be done the long and tedious way of changing the metacontext, peaceful resistance, civil disobedience etc.