NYT Op-ed: California Split

Interesting op-ed. I agree with Rimrocker that there are a lot of benefits that CA gets from being in the Union a few things he didn't mention are that CA as part of the union there is a free flow of tarriff free goods and services along with labor between it and the other states. If CA was its own country you're likely to see some protectionist sentiment between the rest of the US and CA limiting CA produce. Even if CA was part of NAFTA though there would still be added layers of bureaucracy regarding the movement of goods and people slowing down CA's economy. At the sametime you already here a lot of griping about Hollywood elites and if CA seceded there might be a backlash against Hollywood.

I agree with one thing though in the piece that the US eventually will need to decentralize and infact the country envisioned by the Founders was one that was far more decentralized than we have now.

 

Exactly. It's just basic federalism, as envisioned by the Founders. Not sure why Mr. Alperovitz feels the need to reinvent the wheel here.

 

^ Other than that it is the way the US has always done things we don't abolish the states to maintain balance of power. The states provide a check on Federal power and are more responsive to their own citizens. My own feeling is that the PRC would actually better be served by going to a federal system. Many of the problems regarding disparities between the interior and coasts of the PRC might be evened out if different provinces had some level of Federalism.

 

This is what I was going to mention. Secession seems like a funny thing to bring up nowadays, when the Union is really stronger than ever and the global trend has been toward greater, not lesser, centralization. After witnessing the benefits of unity in the EU, it'd seem suicide to break-up the United States. California's (and Texas') wealth is derived in large part from having access to the large and robust US market. If they were to break off, their overall power in the world would lessen, not increase.

 

The founding fathers certainly evisioned the United States as just that, self regulated states bound together for their common defense and not much else. You can thank Cheif Justice John Marshall and his interpretation of the Enumerated Powers and Interstate Commerce Clause for making us a Centralized nation.

Imagine if the doctrine of States' Rights had prevailed (without a Civil War).
Blues music would be real blue.

Speaking of The Civil War, I think it pretty much established the precedent that succession is an act of war so I don't think Cali or Texas is going anywhere.

 

The Laws Of Entropy would say otherwise; the trend in any issue is from simplicity to complexity...there is greater stability in complexity. As example I give you the break up of the Soviet Union, the breaking up of Czechoslovakia,
the future partioning of Iraq and all the little seccesionist movements around the world..Chiapas, Tamil, Basque etc etc etc.

And by stability I mean that though the smaller divisions require some violence to establish themselves there is less likelyhood of the smaller states to become embroiled in world wide conflicts.

 

I have felt this way for a long time. This country is nothing close to a real democracy because it is simply impossible to have one on such a large scale. I think that it will eventually need to be broken up groups (states, regions, whatever) that stay under an umbrella of cooperation and mutual defense/aid and with unrestricted movement within.

I think that is the only way for democracy to work and, incidentally, the only way for real socialist policies to work - federalist socialism.

 

India is definitely different. There are borders between states, with checkpoints. Cargo is checked and whatnot when you cross between states. For businesses, it increases transaction costs and partitions India's economy somewhat.

Dubious, I'm not sure if I understand you, because you seem to be arguing in opposite directions at the same time. It has me wondering if you have a typo or two in there, which suggests I probably don't understand at all. I'm not sure though, if the USSR, Chechoslovakia, and Iraq are good examples to compare the US to, since they all split on ethnic and/or religious faultlines. Even secession movements in Quebec, Chiapas, Chechnya, and the Basque region are based on race and/or religion, not politics. The US does not have a significantly different ethnic or religious identity in California, Texas, or any other region, compared to the whole. Different population ratios, but not a different identity. So, I don't see those examples as being comparable.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know squat about Indian politics.

As for ideological splits, sure it could happen. I think the Civil War could be categorized that way (I'm not sure what else I'd put in this category. Paris Commune? Korean War? Not a lot of candidates are jumping to mind). I was just saying the examples Dubious mentioned aren't good candidates because they had a different basis for secession.

California is diverse, but I don't know if I'd say they are fundamentally different from other states. They have many hispanics, but so does Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. And, hispanic populations are growing in areas with no reputation for them, like North Carolina and Iowa and whatnot. There is a similar phenomenon with blacks; before WWI, the North was very white, but historic events triggered a massive migration and now blacks are commonplace in most states in the Union. California (along with Hawaii and New York) does have a higher concentration of Asians, but I don't know if I'd say their presence in California is influential enough that California has a different racial identity because of it.

Hawaii does seem like the most legitimate secession threat, because they really are different in a lot of ways, and see themselves as such. But, I don't see them giving up the gravy train.

I think you're right that if something calamitous were to happen, secessions may result. But, I have trouble believing that a nation would be split on simple political grounds. In general, I think when a group identifies itself as part of a nation, it wants to steer the whole nation in the way it wants, not just abandon them. Ultimately, I think Californians will prefer trying to force liberal politcs on the US over having their own little liberal country to themselves. Texans too -- except maybe not so liberal.

 

The 17th Amendment removed the last check that the States had on Federal Power. The only thing that keeps the US from becoming even more centralized is that darn, oft-ignored scrap of paper in the Smithsonian.

 

Not exactly because of the Senate and the electoral college even small states can wield inordinate power. While there is a Federal government it is dependent upon coaltions of states and their representatives to maintain that power.

 

The Founders probably didn't envision as centralized as we are now but it was more than just for common defense. When the states were operating under the Articles of Confederation there was a lot problems under the separate tariffs and even currencies the states were operating on. I think what the Founders were looking for wasn't just common defense but a common market and an organization that could speak with a united voice in regard to external affairs.

I don't think either of them will split but if they did I do wonder how much the Federal government would go to war with them. I just have a hard time seeing the rest of the US or even citizens of those states having the will to be killing each other in another civil war especially when given the incredibly lethality of weapons these days. Anyway as long as the Feds controlled nukes there is no way a state could win. Even seizing nukes on their territories they would still need the launch codes from DC and if they could crack them at most they would get is a MAD standoff with the Union.

 

Complex structures aren't always more stable than simple structures and are often more prone to catastrophic failure given an inability to maintain such complexity and your own example of the break up of the Soviet Union illustrates that because of all of the chaos in and between former Soviet States like Georgia, Turkmenistan and several others. The break up of definately hasn't led to more stability in the Balkans. So I agree that things are more complex but not more stable.

Smaller states are less likely to take on world wide conflicts but they can certainly be embroiled in them such as the current War on Terror. Also while smaller states are more likely to engage in more conflicts. I think since the end of the Cold War there have been more wars than during the Cold War and many of these are between countries that were on the same side of the Cold war or like what between Azerbaijan and Armenia part of the same country.

 

Small pockets of chaos, even lots of them, are less destructive than the world wide confligrations of allied nations. If the the world were boken down into thousands of small nations of like ethnicity or religion, there may be more border skirmishes but it massively complicates the conscensus of of power nescessary to raise armies of millions of soldiers and it severly limits the geographic scale required to use weapons of mass destruction without effecting your own people.

100 small engagements with 1000 casualties = 1 firebombing of Dresden

And Juan if you don't think Texan's see themselves as a seperate enity then you don't live here. Really, I should have said the Civil War defacto makes sucession illegle. If the supreme court says, "no, you can't" then it would be futile for a state to consider it...but it would make a great movie.

 

Even among the EU, there's debates over the lack of national identity and whether to centralize or confederate powers. France and Germany support a super nation with their countries as the axis. England and the newly admitted Eastern bloc members prefer national autonomy with the EU acting as a bridge for migrant labor, trade and defense.

Centralization sometimes carries the consequence of provincialism where few regions dominate politics. In the US, there's the growing rift between coastal and rural regions in both culturally and economically. Secession comes into play when these rival influences can assume independent national identities. While Texans pride themselves of the fact above being an American, there aren't compelling virtues to become a full Texan. It's going to take a Herculean effort for Iraq to maintain its current borders while still maintaining a democratic and federalist form of government.

There's no law in nature that says the United States or any country will stay the same. We drew the borders, and we'll draw it again when the time comes.

 

Though in an age of nuclear weapons I'm not sure we will see another war between major powers since there's so much to risk. It seems like now conflicts are more likely between smaller states. As Rwanda shows even smaller states or even non-state actors can kill many many people.