Schneier on Security

tommy • July 16, 2013 5:19 PM

But the article isn’t about physical walls. It’s about sociopolitical isolationism: physical walls built by isolationist societies are only a symptom.

History can easily be read the opposite way: the failure of the Roman Empire to keep out the Germans, many of whom remained only half assimilated to Roman society and who placed tribal identity ahead of imperial welfare, played a major role in the downfall of the Empire.

The downfall of the Empire could easily be argued to be a result not of Roman isolationism but of Roman inclusiveness and globalization: disastrous foreign interventions, unchecked borders, debased currency, etc.

By contrast, a good deal of Britain’s success can be attributed to it being surrounded by a natural fortification: the Atlantic.

As for the downfall of the Ming Dynasty? You can thank free trade:

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blockquote>By the 16th century, however, the expansion of European trade – albeit restricted to islands near Guangzhou like Macao – spread the Columbian Exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and highly-productive corn and potatoes, which diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced a massive influx of Japanese and American silver. This abundance of specie allowed the Ming to finally avoid using paper money, which had sparked hyperinflation during the 1450s. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang Juzheng’s initially successful reforms proved devastating when a slowdown in agriculture produced by the Little Ice Age was met with Japanese and Spanish policies that quickly cut off the supply of silver now necessary for farmers to be able to pay their taxes. Combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty was considered to have lost the Mandate of Heaven and collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng and a Manchurian invasion.

As for Diocletian, Wikipedia again sums it up well:

In spite of his failures, Diocletian’s reforms fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government and helped stabilize the Empire economically and militarily, enabling the Empire to remain essentially intact for another hundred years despite being near the brink of collapse in Diocletian’s youth.

In other words, trust The Atlantic for all of your trite, confirmation-seeking historical needs!

tommy • July 17, 2013 1:29 PM

@tommy What? France and Britain swapped control over various parts of their geographies for centuries. The sea was never a wall. Watch towers, economic pressure and navies made far better walls.

The sea was never an impenetrable barrier as there are no impenetrable barriers in history, but it was an obstacle nonetheless and it undoubtedly altered many of the circumstances of the history of the land. How much more likely would it have been that the English would be speaking French today if not for the Channel. And, for all those Anglo-French land swaps, the border was ultimately again fixed at the Channel.

The very existence of a powerful navy or the corresponding weakness of neighboring navies attests to this: the Romans conquered Britain only with difficulty and Hitler couldn’t simply drive his tanks into London, after all. You can pretend that Britain’s naval power has been unrelated to being surrounded by the ocean, but then what good is naval power to a nation like Botswana or Bolivia?

@Bob:

Keep telling yourself that – it’s a great excuse. It’s not as if the USA’s attitude toward drugs and its habit of destabilising governments it doesn’t agree with has anything to do with the poverty in Mexico. Mexico is doomed until it cuts its ties with the USA. Actually, give it another 50 years and your ageing population will be begging their young population to accept jobs.

1. Hispanics on the mean have higher unemployment rates than whites, are poorly educated compared to whites (and show no signs of closing the gap in a few more generations) and, therefore, earn substantially less money than whites and thus must pay less taxes than whites. The idea that you’re going to support all of these retirees on low-skill labor is a fantasy. I think people are so enamored with the idea that immigrants work hard at their low-skill jobs that they seem to have forgotten that nations that work smarter rather than harder tend to be wealthier. You can find hard working people all over the developing world but, for reasons mysterious to immigration proponents, they somehow remain developing countries.

Around half of all illegal immigrants live in California. I don’t think anyone associates California with fiscal responsibility these days. How many people of Mexican descent are big earners in Silicon Valley who pay substantial tax bills? Not many, especially considering California’s sizable Mexican population.

I’ll make a prediction Bob: In 30 years, the Japanese will continue to keep their xenophobic immigration policy in spite of an increasing number of retirees and the American’s will rely on low-skill labor to support their own, but I predict the Japanese retirees and Japan as a whole will still be far better off than American retirees and America as a whole

You’ll also notice that for all your impassioned bluster about the dangers immigration and US contact poses to Mexico, the elites in Mexico aren’t exactly in the anti-immigration camp. Immigration has allowed the corrupt and nepotistic elites of Mexico to siphon off excess labor and even earn Mexico some cash in return. If anything, immigration helps sustain Mexico’s corruption and nepotism. After all, if the self-interest of the elites hurts the economy, the biggest losers can always cross the border and many of these will even send remittances home to relatives in Mexico.

If you’re concerned about drugs, then put up a barrier that will make it harder for drug mules to run their wares across the border and harder for Mexican drug cartels to move their personnel into American cities. Raise the cost of doing business. After all, the only reason Mexico is the preferred transshipment point for cocaine these days is because enforcement in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico has stepped up substantially since the 1980s. Make Mexico a less desirable transshipment point and the Colombians will find new routes and new friends elsewhere.

As for claims a wall would be too expensive, PLEASE! The San Diego border fence has proven pretty darn effective and it cost about $1 million/mile to build (and perhaps an additional $1-2 million/mile more to handle litigation from pro-immigration groups). Even adjusting for inflation, additional litigation (assuming Congress couldn’t act to limit such litigation), and assuming we’ll need a much tougher sent of barriers, lets say the cost would be a whopping $40 million/mile. The border is about 2000 miles long. Total cost: about $80 billion. That’s a pittance compared to what we’ve spent time and time again on foreign adventurism, stimulus plans, and bailouts in the last decade.