Strong nationalism doesn't help multi-national corporations. It either prevents their operation entirely (for example, bans on imports and nationalization of assets as in Iran) or exploits them only when the government decides the country will profit more than the company (as in China).

it’s not so simple. one side effect of strong nationalism is a restriction on the flow of people. when capital can flow freely, but people can’t, multinationals gain an advantage.

The mere existence of nations prevents the free flow of people.

"Nationalism" usually means something stronger than the existence of nations, such as "the belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals".

it is nationalist policy that restricts flow.

All nations do that. A definition of "nationalist" that includes every nation isn't particularly useful for distinguishing the policies of nations.

All nations are at least a bit nationalistic. If they weren't at all nationalistic, they wouldn't be nations.

Restrictions on the free flow of people are not a binary decision. Countries in the Schengen Area which have almost completely given up the ability restrict movement between their territory and 25 other nations are not restricting the movement of people as much as say North Korea which doesn't even let most of its own citizens travel abroad.

By that definition the US is the least nationalist country on the planet. 20% of the world's foreign born population lives in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

And it seems to me that it's that lack of "nationalism" as you've defined it that's helping US-based companies exploit cheap labor in (or from) other nations.

Even if you were to define nationalism solely based foreign-born population, the least nationalistic country would obviously be Vatican City with 100% foreign born or UAE with 84% if you want to exclude extreme outliers. The US isn't even particularly high at 14% of the population being foreign born.

And of course, restrictions on freedom of movement can't be summed up exclusively with number of immigrants. There are many countries that are much, much easier to get into than the US; people just don't want to go there as much. And of course, nationalism isn't exclusively border control. That is just one nationalistic behavior.

I think you know I was only offering foreign born population as an example of the US's freedom of movement, not as the definition of nationalism.

If you're intentionally misinterpreting me, this discussion isn't going anywhere. But in the hope that that's not the case, I'll try again:

What country offers freedom of movement to the most people? The US, by far.

Nonsense, you are completely ignoring country size, and even in absolute numbers every country in the Schengen Area allows every citizen of other Schengen Area countries complete freedom of movement. For any given country in the Schengen Area, that is more foreigners who are allowed complete freedom of movement than the entire population of the US, much less just the foreign born population of the US. Just because most of those people don't choose to exercise that ability, doesn't mean they don't have it.

The Schengen area is more like the US itself. A federal system of once independent states uniting to eventually form a single nation.

The freedom to move from France to Germany, or from California to New York, has nothing to do with the freedom of movement of people born outside those systems.

LOL, you are basically saying that by entering into an agreement like the Schengen Agreement and becoming less like nations, the overall group becomes more nationalistic. That seems like absurd circular reasoning.

The constituent countries in the EU are still sovereign countries. Unlike US states, they are free to leave at any time.

By your definition of nationalism, Europe is simply replacing French/German/etc nationalism with EU nationalism.

The EU already has a parliament, "federal" laws, and a single currency. They're building an EU army and discussing federal taxes. At what point do you call them a nation?

You are engaging in absurd double-think. Loosening restrictions on movement is not tightening restrictions on movement no matter how many mental hoops you try to jump through.

This discussion is becoming too hostile for Hacker News. I'll make one more attempt to explain my point of view, then I'm out:

Loosening restrictions on select people is not loosening restrictions on everyone.

Vatican City, with their tightly controlled migration policy, is not the country with the most freedom of movement simply because they allow freedom of movement to carefully chosen people.

In the Vatican, for example, a given person either has a 100% chance of migration or a 0% chance. Israel has similar numbers. In the Schengen area, it's either a 100% chance or a very small chance.

Update:

Perhaps this will be clearer. Every free country grants total freedom of movement to some group of people. In Israel, this is Jewish people. In the United States, US citizens. In the Schengen area, citizens of the Schengen area.

What does that have to do with nationalism? Nationalism is a distinction between the treatment of in-group people and out-group people.

In the Schengen area, people from the Schengen area are the in-group.

This line of argument is absurd. You cannot become more restrictive by becoming less restrictive.

Nationalism isn't standalone, it's tied to a particular nation.

Changing loyalty to a larger nation isn't the same as becoming less nationalistic.

The Schengen Area is not in any sense a nation. Look at the definition of the word nation: "a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory". The Schengen Area checks off people and territory but nothing else.

It doesn't even have a shared government to try to make it fit if you are trying to use "nation" as a synonym for "country". Most of the countries are part of the EU, but Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland are part of the Schengen Area but not the EU.

> united by common descent, history, culture, or language

Are you saying Europeans don't have any descent, history, or culture in common?

Descent, mostly not. Culture, mostly not. History, yes, of constantly fighting each other for hundreds of years (which is the type of shared history that creates national separations, not the kind that unites nations).

There are some groups of countries that have some descent and culture in common like Portugal/Spain or Benelux or Scandinavia, but there is no pan-European culture. Portugal, Greece, Monaco, Latvia and Iceland have almost nothing in common.

Then why hasn't the Schengen area admitted north Africa or the middle east?

Spain is a lot closer to Morocco than to Norway, but Spain partnered with Norway rather than Morocco because they share the same descent (European) and culture (Christian).

China offers far more freedom of movement. US is at the bottom. By far.

China doesn't even offer freedom of movement to its own citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

The free flow of people historically involves all the males on one side getting murdered or enslaved and the women raped. The DNA evidence incontrovertibly supports this.

I’d say the idealistic nationalist sees each nation akin to a cell in a cellular automaton and believes that each nation looking after itself in the context of some fundamental rules will achieve better outcomes globally, not just locally, than heavy handed large scale top down control, aka empire.

Taleb cogently argues that scale is of fundamental importance to understanding human behavior. I also accept the argument that distributed local control is generally to be preferred.

No, again, sorry I think this is wrong.

Multinationals are almost all in favour of open borders.

They want a) cheap labour and some, good companies need b) high end talent. The later is more rare though.

Every big company I know is 'pro migration' I can't think of a single one that's against it.

Google is more in favour of getting 'highly skilled' people, while most others are in favour of 'bodies' for cheap labour. Companies that are allowed to think long term, like large banks, want migration because 'adding bodies' is the only way most Western economies actually grow. So in Canada, CIBC, BMO, RBC (i.e. big banks) make their $ from mortgages and small business lending - there's no real way for them to grow other than 'more mortgages'. So they push for more bodies as part of national strategy.

Because most political entities, most big business, and a lot of social activists are globalist in nature, it creates a friction with other groups.

This friction is actually a big deal and is reshaping the political landscape in the entire Western world.

It's getting to be less about left/right than it is those with a globalist view and those with a more localist view. 'Nationalists' tend to fall in the later camp.

It seems to me that immigration helps raise wages. A multinational company is going to employ people in India regardless of US immigration policy. But if those people can come to the US and make 5x the money, then even if they are making somewhat less than other Americans, they are improving (i.e. raising wages in) the global market for labor that we have to compete in.

Given that wages in India and other places are clearly artificially depressed, or people wouldn't want to come to the US, I don't think it's obvious that the multinationals do want open borders. I think it's in the interest of workers though.

> But if those people can come to the US and make 5x the money, then even if they are making somewhat less than other Americans, they are improving (i.e. raising wages in) the global market for labor that we have to compete in.

I would also add that it's wrong to assume that just because an immigrant was hired for a highly skilled job that automatically means there is a native somewhere with an equivalent skillset and able to do the job as well. It boggles the mind how some people assume that somehow every single top expert in the field happens to live in the same city/state/country where a job opening is published.

According to you, immigration would help raise wages globally, but since it introduces lower-paid worker in a national/local labor market, it would reduce wages at this level. And I don't think we're working in a global market for labor, the supply is too unelastic to be a market.

"According to you, immigration would help raise wages globally, but since it introduces lower-paid worker in a national/local labor market"

The labor market is not national or local for a multinational company. Hence, as I wrote, if people are being underpaid in some countries, it is in a multinational's interest to keep them in those countries to exploit, and not let them immigrate to where they could make more money.

The vast majority of people migrating are not doing so for spectacular wages relative to the local market they are coming into.

Average wages for immigrants is lower than the non-immigrant average in almost all societies.

Because we are in high-tech, we think about 'Google' bringing in great talent, which is good ...

But for most, it's not remotely that.

In Canada, in the Oil Sands, they push for migration and the term they use is 'high labour input cost'. Literally high wages.

So yes, in the long term migration can be good depending on a nations actual need and ability to make use of people, but it's about wages and Supply and Demand there.

It's a similar story everywhere. I don't think anyone, even hardcore nationalists are pushing to get rid of bringing in talented people, the numbers are small. And the issue with H1B for example is not so much the nature of it, but that it was kind of being abused by Infosys etc. in the eyes of some.

"Given that wages in India and other places are clearly artificially depressed, or people wouldn't want to come to the US"

No, this is not any kind of 'artificial depression'. India has a fundamentally different economy than the US. Those differences are not artificial.

And the worst part is not just labor arbitrage.

Rules that we have defined to protect the environment in which we live, safety of the products we use, security/privacy of our data.

All of that gets arbitraged away, just like offshore havens are used to hide dirty cash behind veils of various legal stuctures.

Globalists who want the NWO will also exploit legal loopholes in different countries to further their agenda. All perfectly legal as well making them untouchable. Hacking foreign entities is the most obvious example, but it also means global companies can legally engage in corporate espionage to further consolidate their positions. Tax havens and off-shoring profits is another example many many people will be familiar with. Some CEO's are legal moral criminals in a way, but the common theme is clever people have been exploiting stupid since before the time of Christ.

In what way? Nationalism leads to immigration restrictions and protectionism.

There are shades of nationalism; I assume parent suggests multinational corps aim for a region in this spectrum - a region, in which movement is restricted, so that workers from poor country A don't migrate to richer country B, but where trade isn't restricted, so nothing stops the multinational to sell products made in A to people in B.

All nations have immigration controls, most of them strict, and the majority of most economies - even Western economies are protected (Banking, Telecoms, Entertainment, Agriculture, Energy) and even those that might not be technically protected are de-facto protected by business or political cabals. Try and buy a major Japanese auto company and see how they handle that.

> Nationalism feeds into that

How?

I assume he means because nationalism stokes tensions between citizens while companies quietly extract value from society.

Why would nationalism stoke tensions between citizens? The point of nationalism is to unite the society around the nation.

It seems to me that multiculturalism if anything leads to more tensions as it seeks to add more groups that don't have as much in common as the people already there.

Contemporary history suggests nationalism is almost always a reactionary movement. Reactionary movements are by definition in reaction to some other political entity. Thus the tension.

That's true (at least where there are large nationalist and globalist groups in conflict), but it seems to me a lack of nationalism may sometimes result in suppression of the expression of self-interested sentiments, especially when globalism does not decrease overall GDP but causes large changes in the distribution of income/wealth.

Nationalism is a shiny, ultimately self-defeating distraction for unions. It allows politicians and union leadership to avoid the hard work of crafting and executing on real pro-labor policies to grapple with the reality of globalized capital. Instead, it pits workers against each other, factionalizes them and creates scapegoats so they never organize as a class.

http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-dem...

It competes with unions as the class of people who organize together.

Nationalism preserves&increases the gradient/spread.

I don't buy that. I'm old enough to remember when people (US citizens) got upset when companies moved their operations from the north (Northern US) to the South (Southeastern US) because it was cheaper (cheap labor).

Yes, there was a play arbitrage with labor, but nationalism never feed into that because it was all inside one country.

I think it's the other way around.

Multinationals would prefer to get rid of all nationality, ethnicity, religion, culture, political ideology etc - it stands in the way of their bottom line.

Strong nations can stand up to big corps.

Strong cultures make it difficult to 'define consumer behaviour' - example: in Europe, American companies have a difficult time selling some consumer products because Europeans 'have their own way' of doing things. Why do you think Starbucks doesn't have a lot of stores in Italy? Because Italians don't care for it - they do their own thing.

This is kind of ugly - but there is a kind of 'culturally secular left' and a 'big / globalist business right' that actually get a long quite well - they both want to get rid of what they view as 'outdated norms'. The left wants to re-write social structure, the right wants to re-write consumption, consumerism and define our aspirations.

I'm not being conspiratorial, it's not like there's a cabal of evil globalists pulling strings, it's just overall in the best interest of these groups. BigCos tend to promote policies which benefit them - not the local population. Shareholders just don't think or care that much about people or culture.

Wait what? Are you claiming that corporations deign for some countries to become dumping grounds? I'm not sure what you mean here. The article hints at the fact that while standards of living increase for some, they decrease for others... Which is essentially the complaint that anti-globalization activists have. It's not a rising tide but a race to the bottom.

Most corporations (I can't think of any counter examples, but maybe someone here will find one) are all on board with abolishing borders. It makes the most sense from the POV of a capitalistic institution since it drives down wages and increases efficiency much more than strong national borders and "nationalism" would. (Wouldn't your local tech giant like an unlimited supply of work visas to pass out like candy?)

It seems to me that open borders and pro-globalization activists are mostly playing right into the wildest dreams of corporate robber barons. Who prefer the "race to the bottom" WRT labor costs that is "globalism."