A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
States like New York, California, etc. have been subsidizing states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, etc. for some time. If we split it up in perhaps the most likely way (along political groupings) the poorer states would not be in for a good time.
Addendum: if we were to do the split right now, we might also see the rise of a few virulently and openly fascist countries.
Addendum: if we were to do the split right now, we might also see the rise of a few virulently and openly fascist countries
sooo the US but smaller and less powerful? sign me up
California and the other rich blue states funds the rest of the USβ poor ass states, so I'd love for them to stop suckling on our teat.
Texas is red, and second in GDP, they can support the red states, lol
Texas can't even properly support their own power infrastructure inside their own state
The vast majority of the population of Texas (Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas/Ft Worth) are solidly blue. The state maps are gerrymandered to death such that 100,000 square miles of empty land has the same voting power as over ten million citizens. This is the sole and only reason Texas is consistently "red", is via rampant voter disenfranchisement.
I agree, what a little regulation could do to help them out
I agree, and it just got a lot worse maybe
I actually think Texas would stay on its own as it is still a republic and wouldn't want to support another state, as you said they can barely support themselves
As an aside, when Republicans were shown platforms without an R or D next to it IIRC they were more likely to choose the D platform.
Sounds good to me. xD
Communities are much better at identifying and coming up with solutions for their own needs than a faraway capitol could ever be. Linking communities by bioregion (instead of existing state lines) and having them cooperate to make larger decisions would be a workable alternative.
You might find interesting: Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, The Next Revolution by Murray Bookchin and others.
If by bioregion you mean geographical features, like rocky mountains and rivers and such, let me give you a warning. It might seem like a straightforward way to do things, but it can lead to discontentment among the people. For example, in europe, in the southern alps, there's a region called "tirol" with a relatively homogenous culture. unfortunately, a big mountain range ran right across the region, dividing it in two - "northern tirol" and "southern tirol". when WW2 was lost, the region got re-divided and split up along the geographical borders, instead of the cultural borders, so the region was torn in two. people are still pissed about this, a hundred years later.
so, you might want to ask the actual population living there for their opinion and respect that.
Fair warning! This is what I meant, but of course culture is worth taking into account : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioregion
interesting! the landscape definitely influences the humans that live there, but i think besides plant and animal species, also things like the proximity to the sea (for shipping trade) plays an important role. the sea connects more than it divides, so regions close to the sea are natural global traders. Consider england (which is one huge island) was historically the country with the biggest navy, that sailed all across the world, to india, to china, and had lots of exchanges that way. so yes, landscape does something to the way humans live, but it's not just plants and vegetation, it's mostly the landscape formation, i guess.
The rest becomes an overseas territory of Australia.
My work here is done.
florida overthrows all overseas terriorory of austraila along with mainland australia
Not when all the kids have polio. They ain't gonna have the fighting force.
that is the weapon the polio mutates in them to a stronger form and wipes out the world cos they decided vaccines make you gay or some shit
Speaking as a Canadian, I don't want New England, New York, Washington and Oregon.
The eastern states are slightly less crazy, but there are a shit ton of crazy Christian gun fucking kooks in the Western states. No thank you.
We would have to do some de-arming and reeducation before taking those on.
I think the concept is good, that's literally the design our government was created for. United States. We don't have provinces, we have states
It's going to be a huge mess, but I think that's the most likely path
Sure, except you get all the same issues with countries not getting along, and now something the federal government could handle, like a space program, has to either be done redundantly by all the states separately which is wasteful and might render the whole thing impractical, or in some politicised clusterfuck of an international organisation.
There's a reason the trend has been towards less sovereign countries and borders over time.
Before we go this drastic, can we increase our representation in congress? 435 isnβt enough. Using a number determined about 100 years ago has forced congressional members to represent more and more people, helping to polarize the house.
There's the concept from Nine Nations of America and various similar concepts looking at how the boundaries shown on maps do not necessarily reflect the demographic reality. I've wondered for years about the possibility of a sort of 'hyper-federalism,' taking the idea of federalism (having a local 'state' government and a national 'federal' government) a bit further, empowering not just towns to have councils but neighborhoods, and nesting the local within the broader form. (e.g. X voters and their living space form a 'district.' Representatives from X districts form a 'locale.' Representatives from X locales form a 'region.' etc.) It's obviously just my random thought but I wonder sometimes if it could be developed into something usable.
i fully agree with this. the main reason why trump can mess with the people like this is because the people have no power over their own region. if trump wants to, he can just declare that it is now illegal to drive black-painted cars in the neighbourhood of chicago or grow strawberries in your own garden. the only way to prevent such shenanigans is if people have power over their own territory.
To be precise, the element giving Trump and his people the ability to do the things they do seems to be simply that they do them without consideration. You can do a lot if you don't worry about the repercussions or consequences.
They would build a wall against Florida.
If this happens I hope the balkanization will be along Indigenous territories as part of decolonization efforts and not modern states or provinces.
I'm not living in the US but i think it would be a good idea. The most obvious, biggest benefit is the very different directions that people in the US want to take. It's just very clear that the lifestyle differences between rural and urban US are practically irreconciliable. You can't have one country when people want to tear it apart.
I think financially, it wouldn't really make a lot of differences. The people would have to pay their taxes directly to the state, instead of the federal government, which is a manageable step. I think the blue states might draw a tiny financial advantage from it, while the rural areas would possibly suffer a medium-sized disadvantage, because today, most blue states pay more in taxes than they receive back, and vice-versa for rural areas. But i suspect the issue might balance itself out over time with internal reforms in the rural areas.
Divided we fall. Seriously though.
ππ€²
I know of one shill who talks about a possibility of America splitting into five regions, each with their own government structure. He thinks they'll be split up in 2026, and that Trump would be the final US president.
I don't know how that'll turn out, and neither does my producer, who told me about what this shill said. Likely some dirtbag from the Roman Catholic reserves of Christofascism.
California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington should secede and form a new Pacific States. The rest of Gilead can lie in the bed they made.
Eastern Oregon and Washington would likely prefer to stay with the rest of the nation. They are already trying to join Idaho.
as long as they all have a nuke silo per state
There's already some good discussion here. A little less drastic is a soft succession. It's already happened and is happening. The blog articulates it much better than i could, but the essence is that the US constitution already has been interpreted to give state laws a sort if priority over feseral laws. Additionally, states can apply financial pressure to the federal government.
Near rhe end of the blog he ponders whether this could result in a shell fedwral government.
Yes. I've been slowly advocating for the west of North America to break away from the greedy East stuck in the past. We embrace the future on the west coast and we hold a lot of resources and links to the world through the Pacific. It's about time we get what we deserve and stop being dictated to by the East Coast conservatives.
Bring in Alaska, BC, and the Yukon and we are golden! We'd hold some serious power if we could ever reach out and take it.
Bring in Alaska, BC, and the Yukon
Excuse me? Alaska is yours, the others are not. Are you a 51st stater?
No, I say we all break off and fuck the rest of both countries. I love Canada, but out here we get the shit end of the stick. The West can survive on its own, especially if we add the 4 states mentioned and Yukon.