Blue-sky thinking: Why not split the USA?

[robkelk]

May as well start this in Politics...

I call this sort of thing "blue-sky thinking" because it's pretty close to having my head in the clouds, except that I've actually given some thought to it.

Why not split the USA? It isn't as if you've been "United" since the Clinton Presidency.

Yes, I know - you had a war about this over a century and a half ago. But that was when the Whigs were still a viable political party. Things change.

There's this recent suggestion, and this de facto one from when Obama was elected President. It's remarkable how similar they are.

In both cases, the "left coast" goes its own way (maybe keeping Hawaii) with a left-leaning government; New England, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and all states that border the Great Lakes (and maybe Iowa and Minnesota) become another country living under the old "Yankee" stereotype which quickly adapts to modern reality; and there's a big stretch of conservatism between them in the middle of the continent.

If this is going to happen, I can't see Texas not becoming its own country. (They already have a flag.) Maybe Utah, too. And Alaska would have reason to become its own country as well. Heck, Minnesota might decide to go it alone. If Hawaii doesn't join the "left coast", they they'd probably be independent, too.

There's an outside chance that Maine might possibly maybe decide to join Canada... but even I think that's unlikely.

I'm not sure what would happen in New Mexico and Arizona. (Or, for that matter, in Alberta; they might decide to join that mid-continent conservative country.)

Sure, there'd be pockets of people in each new country who would have preferred to live in one of the other countries. There's historical precedent for that, and a matching historical solution.

So... am I coming up with an alternate history setting here, or a reasonable political suggestion?

[classicdrogn]

I expect there'd have to be an actual shooting civil war before there'd be enough support for it to even be put on the table as a possibility, and for most of the participants to still be inclined towards an all-or-nothing victory rather than accept it. The whole "one country from sea to sea" thing is a big part of the national identity.

[Labster]

This can be done legally at a Constitutional Convention. I'd actually be concerned about what happened afterwards, as the Partition of India worked so bloody well, emphasis on "blood".

And actually the Whigs ceasing to be a viable party was one of the portents for the American Civil War.

There's also no real incentive for the red states to play ball in this plan. Right now they have a majority of the power with a minority of the votes. Change to any other plan, and you get a country where the majority of the wealth is concentrated in the blue state country, which would de facto lead to power tipping the other way. So you'd have to trick the conservatives to agree to this plan, because it's not in their interest. If you could get conservatives to convince themselves that they're under attack by liberals who are in control of the system and destroying their way of life, maybe you could pull this off. Okay, so maybe that's plausible.

This is canon in Ghost in the Shell/Appleseed, right?

But, like, I would actually just prefer a federal union for all of North America, and this goes the wrong way. We can't even tell the difference when we meet a Canadian on the street. And Mexican culture, it's like not really that different anyway. I mean, I hear mariachi bands from the neighbors during holidays anyway, and that's fine. Unless the residents start singing after a few too many beers, that is.

[Mamorien]

If you could get conservatives to convince themselves that they're under attack by liberals who are in control of the system and destroying their way of life, maybe you could pull this off.

did you mean: where we are right fucking now

[ECSNorway]

Quite frankly, a huge part of the US' problem is that - despite all the advantages of modern communication and the rest - the country is simply too big to effectively govern. There are too many inefficiencies, too many places where what works for one group (say, inner-city Democrats) is a horrible problem for another (rural Republicans) and vice-versa.

[Black Aeronaut]

The problem is that the rural conservatives expect the urban liberals to get in line and do as they say because not being like they are is somehow inherently evil.

Meanwhile urban liberals would like it if the rural conservatives would quit trying to tell women what they can and can't do with their reproductive systems, respect the choices of people that live alternative lifestyles or are otherwise LGBTQ, and quit letting corporations lead the rest of us around by the noses with blatantly empty promises of "You can have all this too if you just let us take away everything you hold dear!"

I mean, I do get what you're saying - that the amount of governing power as you go from the top to the bottom needs to be progressively more granular. But some things absolutely need to be set at the Federal Level - like a nationwide education standard if we are ever going to expect to keep our workforce competitive with the rest of the world.

Of course, the Old Guard doesn't like THAT idea because they know that the smarter people are, the more easily they'll see through their lies.

[LynnInDenver]

Meanwhile urban liberals would like it if the rural conservatives would quit trying to tell women what they can and can't do with their reproductive systems, respect the choices of people that live alternative lifestyles or are otherwise LGBTQ, and quit letting corporations lead the rest of us around by the noses with blatantly empty promises of "You can have all this too if you just let us take away everything you hold dear!"

You mean the ones that seem to think that those alternative lifestyle choices are actively harmful to society in general, rather than the liberal idea that the harm part is actually coming from the way we're treated because of those choices, including the assumption that it's enough of a choice we can choose to be like everyone else. (Actually, it probably does do harm... to their idea that only the White Rich Cis Straight Male can be at the very top, and everyone else had better be subservient. Oh, and that being gay is concealable enough, that they really hate it immensely because they might not be able to discriminate against it as "easily" as any other factor.)

Do note that I spent 40+ years trying to do the "choose to be like everyone else", and while I haven't been actively suicidal, it makes it a LOT harder to do things like making healthy diet choices, given the way that maintaining the pretense takes much more mental energy than they will ever know.

Regarding the corporate thing, I've gotten to the point that I'm starting to resent the social media companies, in part because they've shown that their "break it fast" business model is more important than doing their part to maintain a sane society.

[hazard]

That's because 'the break it fast' business model makes them money, but maintaining a sane society does not.

[classicdrogn]

The profits form a sane society are all indirect and/or non-monetary, so who even has an incentive to try to maintain it? Just those nuts who care about things like "courtesy," "liberty," "privacy," and other outdated, obsolete concepts like that. /s

[Rajvik]

The problems with breaking up the country are multiple and painful, historically it was tried and failed because one side said "HELL NO, YOUR GONNA DO AS WE SAY!" and they had the force of arms to make it stick. At that point the breakdown was regional and actually had the easiest and best chance of a allowable split. Now the problem is rural versus urban and progressive versus conservative, and every state has both, and it's not like we can put walls around your cities and let you govern your cities like you want while we govern our rural areas like we want.

(ok arguably we could but you would cry because you couldn't get things that you wanted/needed to survive and have a comfortable life. but that's life under seige)

Drogn, you say that

The profits form a sane society are all indirect and/or non-monetary, so who even has an incentive to try to maintain it? Just those nuts who care about things like "courtesy," "liberty," "privacy," and other outdated, obsolete concepts like that. /s

but then you demand that us rural folks abide by your urban decisions and rules of "You must allow this" and "You can't tell people that they can't do that" and if you want i can probably give you a half dozen examples right off the top of my head

[classicdrogn]

You seem to be assuming that I live in a city. Also that I want anything but to be left the fuck alone without having someone else's idea of righteous behaviour shoved in my face, or to shove mine in anyone else's as such. That means a lot of "you must not forbid this" and a big "do what you like as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else," but I'd own that amount of hypocrisy in the name of being left alone to do my thing in return for leaving everyone else to do theirs within those very loose lines if it would just fucking work.

But no.

Of course not.

Fuck all y'all. Left. Right. Just go explode.



... I really need to stop reading this forum.

[Labster]

The problems with breaking up the country are multiple and painful, historically it was tried and failed because one side said "HELL NO, YOUR GONNA DO AS WE SAY!" and they had the force of arms to make it stick. At that point the breakdown was regional and actually had the easiest and best chance of a allowable split. Now the problem is rural versus urban and progressive versus conservative, and every state has both, and it's not like we can put walls around your cities and let you govern your cities like you want while we govern our rural areas like we want.

(ok arguably we could but you would cry because you couldn't get things that you wanted/needed to survive and have a comfortable life. but that's life under seige)

Whoa whoa whoa, that's not how I remember the Civil War.  What I recall are some sore losers who lost an election passing a law entitled "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act" in December 1860, and laying siege to a US Army fort six days later.  And then, when Abraham Lincoln finally took office two months later, he held off on military action.  In the middle of April, he sent a resupply mission so our soldiers didn't run out of food, which is when the Confederate forces opened fire on their legal government.  From start to finish the Civil War was a aggressive, illegal action on the part of the Southern states where no attempt at legal succession was ever made.  It was not "do as we say" but rather "these people are attacking our army."  But that's life under siege.

Actually, the liberal areas have most of the ports, and all of them on the west coast.  We can get everything we want from the ocean, possibly even cheaper without Trump's new taxes on imports.  For reference as to how this works, see the Netherlands and the free cities of Germany.

[Matrix Dragon]

The problems with breaking up the country are multiple and painful, historically it was tried and failed because one side said "HELL NO, YOUR GONNA DO AS WE SAY!" and they had the force of arms to make it stick. At that point the breakdown was regional and actually had the easiest and best chance of a allowable split. Now the problem is rural versus urban and progressive versus conservative, and every state has both, and it's not like we can put walls around your cities and let you govern your cities like you want while we govern our rural areas like we want.

(ok arguably we could but you would cry because you couldn't get things that you wanted/needed to survive and have a comfortable life. but that's life under seige)

Whoa whoa whoa, that's not how I remember the Civil War.  What I recall are some sore losers who lost an election passing a law entitled "Resolution to Call the Election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. President a Hostile Act" in December 1860, and laying siege to a US Army fort six days later.  And then, when Abraham Lincoln finally took office two months later, he held off on military action.  In the middle of April, he sent a resupply mission so our soldiers didn't run out of food, which is when the Confederate forces opened fire on their legal government.  From start to finish the Civil War was a aggressive, illegal action on the part of the Southern states where no attempt at legal succession was ever made.  It was not "do as we say" but rather "these people are attacking our army."  But that's life under siege.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't most of it just about reducing the number of slaves a person could own? And not to zero, just 'less than you have now?' That's kind of how you lot ended up getting Texas, now that I think about it...

[robkelk]

There were plenty of reasons why the unpleasantness of the 1860s took place.

None of those reasons are relevant now, save for the States' right to pass laws that affect only the individual states ... which could possibly be better served by a breakup, depending on how a breakup was to take place.

[Epsilon]

The worst corruption is local. If you split up the US, you'd be condemning hundreds of thousands of Americans to even worse living conditions.

Also, civil war with nukes. You know, Not Good.

[Rajvik]

Labster, Matrix, you are both misunderstanding what I meant there, I probably didn't phrase it well. The US civil war had a physical regional divide amongst the beliefs. Slavery in the south for instance was both urban and rural, and the north was anti-slavery both rurally and urbanely. This civil divide would be mostly urban versus rural and completely progressive liberal versus conservative. The problem with that is that there are not enough productive rural liberals to support an urban populace, and thus are dependent upon the rural conservatives to survive.

[hazard]

Rajvik, have you ever looked at the federal money flows in the USA, how much every state receives and pays? Or have you ever looked at things like per state or region, or industry income levels?

Because those things point out something very interesting.

On the average, states, regions and industries that are strongly supported by right wing politicians tend to bring in less money per capita than those supported by the left-to-center right politicians. And if you look at the federal money flows you see something similar, with states heavily supporting the right often drawing substantially more money from the federal government than they pay into it, while the states more to the center or the left often paying more money than they receive.

Make no mistake, nobody in the USA would enjoy the economical troubles that would be the result of any division of the USA, but on the average the more conservative leaning areas are going to end up comparatively worse as a result of the loss of access to outside resources to finance themselves, while the lack of that drain on their resources in the more liberal areas gives them more of a cushion to fall back upon.

Will the liberal areas need the resources the more conservative areas provide to fuel their economies? Sure. But those conservative areas need to sell those same resources just as badly. And the conservative areas have less of a margin.

[robkelk]

...
Will the liberal areas need the resources the more conservative areas provide to fuel their economies? Sure. But those conservative areas need to sell those same resources just as badly. And the conservative areas have less of a margin.

Which just points out how much of the economy is driven by trade. In that scenario, the more conservative areas would want to be running a trade deficit, because that would mean the money is coming in faster than it's going out.

(Which means it would be just like the world outside our windows.)

[Rajvik]

Hazard, could you link to those please, I would love to take a look at them.

[RMH999]

Rajvik,

Here are 4 different sources

https://howmuch.net/articles/federal-bud...ted-states

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/eco.../39202299/

https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-...irginia-49

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-le...ment/2700/

There are some differences due to methodologies, but in general the "red" states receive more and the "blue" states receive less (or go in the hole).

*edit*
https://keypolicydata.com/government/fed...-spending/

This one is older (2010), but the trends are the same and it has a breakdown to county level.

RMH

[Rajvik]

Thank you, I will look at these and make comments later