David Rauschenbach ("Leader by default")

In 2008, Synchronica acquired Axis Mobile, and sent me to Israel to check out the goods. Synchronica does business in Dubai, and in other places where mobile phones are sold and used, and it was explained to me that if I ever had to enter Dubai, I'd now require a second passport, because Dubai mistreats, harasses, delays, or detains those with an Israeli stamp in their passport. Does that sound like a business trip you want to take?

Notice that I did not say that Dubai cares whether you have travelled to Israel. If that were the case, second passports would not exist, and commerce would soon stop at ALL borders, worldwide, which is called protectionism, or nation-state suicide.

What is bad for business is bad for Dubai and Israel, who both love money as much as the next tax regime; in other words, a lot more than you do. So, for the sake of doing something rather than nothing, the infection of bureaucracy promotes and then enforces a useless border policy, knowing full well that you require the means to bypass it, in order to get your job done. The result is a transparent facade of weak national security, which not only breeds distrust, but comes at a great expense: the squandering of a nation's prosperity on its tax-addicts, who mistreat the very drivers of that national prosperity.

The nation-states continue to be their own downfall. They harm themselves more than any army of mistreated traveling businesspeople, or terrorists, could ever hope to.