If CA successfully broke away, the very next thing you’d see happening would be demands for a culture- and money-driven breakup between NoCal, SoCal, CentralCal, the State of Jefferson, the bit at the top that will be claimed by Independent Cascadia, and of course the City-State of Siliconia (ruled over by enlightened despot Peter Thiel).
At that point, people might as well call it a day and join Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong or another fine clave or franchise.
Should be a seamless process. There’s no way President Trump would order the US Army to invade California.
It would look bad.
That’s certainly not what all non-statists are working towards. It’s a big difficult project to undertake only to create something similar.
I’m aware, but we’re talking about this specific instance, which is less about the nuances of the nation-state and the variety of possible alternatives and more about a power play between people who already wield a great deal of power in the current system. If this becomes a real thing, I don’t think California would suddenly become an anarchists paradise, where everyone reads Emma Goldman and the state structures are replaced by mutual cooperation between equal citizens (if it did, it might be worth moving there). It would be dominated by the rich and powerful, with their interests first, but with a greener, more social tolerant twist. California is great on some things, but this has nothing to do with anti-statism, I think.
California Nation State of Mind
I agree with Ms Mindy but it would be nice to fantasize about.
I’m generally supportive of the right to self-determination at whatever level people want to self-determine, but Calexit is a terrible idea. People like to point to the size of the economy compared to other countries, but remember that of course a lot of that prosperity comes from being part of a large, prosperous, 50 state free trade zone. Even if the U.S. were to be amicable about continuing free trade (doubtful), there would undoubtedly be a higher barrier than now, which would have an adverse effect on the economy.
Also, the military, so the whole thing is a non-starter.
Just on a personal level, I work out of state quite a bit and the idea of having to get a work visa is just ugh.
Including the anti-constitution part is also a reminder that we’d be giving up the bill of rights. I really don’t trust that to be opened up for debate. I shudder to think what it would be replaced with.
Indeed! I wish most things were their ideal instead of their reality.
Does Puerto Rico still want to become a state, post-election?
Is Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong taking applications for citizenship now? Because I’m game!
Don’t see how this could really happen. Think of the immediate consequences. Now, it will take a passport to enter or leave CA. Are they ready for that? Every US Govt installation (military, research, etc.) will need to move or work out some deal. Oh, CA wants to bring in (or ship out) items or electricity from another state? Well, that’s a little more difficult now. No one has to sell them electricity (which they depend on). Tourism will go to crap, at least in the short run. Lots to consider. IMHBAO, not gonna happen.
Up for a fun-loving hijink, are you? Or maybe just seriously in business?
Me, I’m pretty much a citizen of the First Distributed Republic already.
We’ll trade it for all of your food, since we grow it here in California.
Here’s my plan:
We give the red section to Trump and the GOP on the condition that they build their wall around the whole thing. The yellow we give back to the natives. Alaska and Hawaii can do whatever they want. The greater New Orleans area becomes an independent territory, and we pay for the transition by selling Florida to Walt Disney.
In all seriousness, though, what I would like to see is state lines redrawn to create 10 or 15 states, using American Nations as a guide:
At that point, each state would be a largely homogeneous culture. We then go the full states-rights route, creating something more like the European Union or the original pre-civil war US where the states are effectively independent countries bound by a common trade/defense/rights pact.
In the short term, it would play out very badly for the red states, but it limits the damage they can do to everyone else, and in the long term I think interstate trade would end up being a stronger force for positive change than federal regulations- I have a lot of socialist leanings and it’s not often that I go all “free market solves everything”, but what we’re doing now clearly isn’t working.
As a Californian, I will say there is a certain amount of sentiment here along the lines of “Why do my taxes go to fill in rural, redneck, poor state here so they can shit on black folks, women, etc. and whine about the government while living on our (California) industry and money? Fuck 'em.”
Well, I would say if there is any reason to break up a country, deliberately sabotaged electoral mechanisms would be it. The party with total power federally is fundamentally anti-democracy, and in a couple of years your supreme court may be anti-democracy as well. I am not saying this out of anger: I genuinely don’t know what there is to do about that other than leave.
California doing that would just mean a few more votes for the Republicans. There is no way red states would follow suit. What “clout”? If the Republicans could take away all of California’s votes they would, democracy be damned. Trump says up to 5 million votes for Clinton were fraudulent. The logical extension of that is he wants to just straight up erase 1 in 20 votes from California (and around a similar proportion of New York).
I don’t think the Texas secessionists will be unhappy about this at all. They probably want California gone.
I doubt he’d do it. Steve Bannon will be telling him that California leaving is the best thing that ever happened. Next thing you know, New York decides staying in the union without California is not viable, takes the rest of the Northeast with it. Then the white nationalist government of the remaining middle can bring in heinously racist policies to force non-white people out towards the coasts, and Steve Bannon has his white nation in North America.
I bet half the federal Republicans want this to happen.
Map population to that map… you’ll find that most people in California live in Blue. The red areas are the emptiest.
Boilerplate for all of us.
CA holds 1/10th of the U.S. population, runs the 6th largest economy (soon to be 5th thanks to Brexit) in the world, grows a good portion of the rest of the country’s food, develops a lot the technology in everyone’s lives and sets a lot of the country’s cultural agenda. I think they could push a fair-minded basic Electoral College reform on the rest of the country, even in the face of the GOP’s consolidation of power.
Not to mention everyone in the Kremlin who supports them.
