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First off, I suppose I should thank you for taking the mask off, if only for a moment.
But having said that the obvious counter argument is having admitted that you feel no particular sense of loyalty and are only shopping around for who ever will give you the best price, and will ditch them in a heartbeat should a better deal come along, why should anyone give you that deal? Having effectively announced your intention to defect in the any subsequent prisoners dilemma, why would you expect anyone to cooperate with you? It seems to me that your fall into the same trap that pretty much all utopians from a progressive background seem to fall into. An inability or unwillingness to consider the possibility of multiple agents.
I kind of touched on this in my reply to @sliders1234 below, but if an identity can be changed at will it ceases to be meaningful as an identity. If an if an identity can be changed at will, what obligation does anyone else have to honor it? The answer of course is "none", because an contract that can be broken on a whim without consequence is no contract, and that's what this is really about. The Free-rider problem. You want to enjoy the privileges of membership in a tribe or nation without having to bear the associated responsibilities.
Why should a Nation confer identity?
Think of it from an analogy of the corporate world. Some companies attract talent by paying them a lot of money. Some do it by fostering an identity; "We are all a family here". I think to very many people it's evident that the former is a more 'honest' portrayal of the transaction/relation than the latter. If anything it's a meme that companies that tout a "family environment" are to be avoided because they are probably shortchanging you in what you want mostly from them, money.
In the same vein, why shouldn't a nation be just a place you live in? If you look at immigration trends (revealed preferences), its not that people want to move to the countries that give them the strongest national identity, but the countries that give them the best place to live in. I'm pretty sure more people want to move to America than China.
Buying into any form of national loyalty means the nation can effectively have an easier time short changing you, they can send you to the trenches, they can loot you of your earnings and yada yada.
In short; Why shouldn't a market system apply when choosing a place to live? Why not have competition in this domain? I think putting national identity above how good it is to live in a nation is putting the cart before the horse. Is voting with your feet/money not that much more powerful than just voting?
This is your position disguised as your opponents' position.
"Companies are not really like families" doesn't mean that families aren't real. It means that families that are as easy to change as changing your company, aren't real. And you're the one in favor of easy changes.
I don't see how its in contradiction to what I said. I am stating quite precisely that your nation should be easy to change. Because under that system Nations have an impetus to not shortchange their citizens (residents) too much.
Loyalty to a Nation is well and good if you actually like you Country. The founding fathers were loyal to America for the same reasons they were disloyal to England.
As an individual who wants to live a good life "fuck you I'm leaving" is much more appealing to me than "I'll stay here and fight with everything I have to make it better".
I can go fight and make somewhere else better. Respect should be bidirectional after all. Why be loyal to that who wrongs you? Would you be singing the same tune were you a part of a nation that hated you and your values?
This is simultaneously obviously true core of the dispute. Having said "fuck you I'm leaving" what consideration do the latter owe the former other than their enmity. Go away, we don't want you. We will not die in that man's company, that fears to die with us.
The latter doesn't owe the former anything.
Taxes were used in exchange or welfare/infrastructure/protection. Those are the concrete things that are being traded, anything else is abstract.
It might be a very useful narrative if the citizens of a nation do believe that they owe something more to a nation than what they already pay in taxes, some kind of loyalty. It might even be good for the individuals because it forces the group to stay around and improve things other than leaving.
But some countries are so far gone, and an individuals life is so short relative to institutional change that I can't in good faith suggest to anyone "just stay and make your country better bro".
If my friend laments to me that this country sucks, I won't tell him to stay around and potentially waste half of his life just voting and campaigning harder, I'd suggest him to leave to somewhere that better fits his values.
Much like marriages, some of them are better when fixed through perseverance and some of them are better when dissolved, I'm not going to ask a battered wife of a drunkard just to stay around and make the marriage better, I'll tell her to leave.
Precisely, and so I ask you the same question I asked @hustlegrinder. If the only governing principle is "what's in it for me" and all you have to offer is the value of your stuff why shouldn't they just take your stuff?
Because that's something you can only get away with so many times before no more stuff is being made? I'm sure this is not the steelman of your question, but I think my answer to that is already embedded in my previous comment.
Answer me this? What option is better if a country truly royally sucks? Or what would you tell a friend who finds his country unbearable. Don't imagine he lives in the US, or Canada or Germany. Imagine he lives in cartel territory in Mexico.
My ideal allows those who love their countries and those who don't an option. Just because you have the option to leave doesn't mean you need to exercise it.
Your ideal is to treat people as interchangeable cogs in the economic machine. Components to be removed and replaced as one sees fit.
I do not share this ideal.
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