YOU: "require a supermajority for secession, [...] Biafra, for example"
>>I will assume that you FAVORED the Biafran secession, whose suppression by the Nigerian Muslims (1967-70) killed over a million people.
YOU: "how large a region must be[...]. My own answer is that the minimal region consists of one person."
>>In this you concur with von Mises, who wrote: "If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done."
HOWEVER, that's nonsense. A person who declares himself a nation cuts himself off from the society above him. The guiding principle here is the SUBSIDIARITY of Johannes Althusius (1557-1638). Smaller units (counties, cities, homeowners’ associations, and individuals) seek secession only as a tool to realize their true aim, which is autonomy. To truly function at their best, each of them must have the cooperation of associations both greater and smaller than themselves. This sense of APPROPRIATE AUTONOMY IN GOVERNANCE is SUBSIDIARITY, whereby the smallest competent governmental unit exercises precedence over other units.
YOU: "one makes secession easier by persuading lots of people that easy secession is a good thing"
>>Hey, you've been reading my stuff! The Constitution of Non-State Government: Field Guide to Texas Secession, here:
Very interesting. I could not have possibly imagined anyone seeing tax competition as a bad thing.
Based on my experience, the arguments against secession mostly revolve around ideas of national identity and nationalism (which I find very irrational) but I have rarely seen people object to real practical secession.
For example:
Indian state of Goa was under Portuguese control until 1960s while India got freedom in 1947. Despite joining India, Goa's laws remained Portuguese and continue to remain so for most part. Also, Goan born people continue to get Portuguese citizenship (and by extension EU) if they so desire. As a native of this state I have not seen anyone complain about this at all. If anything everyone thinks this is a great arrangement. However, there is a general opposition of secession from both locals and the Indian government.
I'm curious how your reasoning on "Preventing Benevolent Redistribution" applies to the United States. You mentioned that it's very unlikely for a central government to tax a richer region primarily to benefit a poorer region, suggesting it's rare enough not to worry about. However, where I live, in California, this seems to have been happening for decades and, whatever the intention, the result benefits the "poor people in a poor region."
Every year California sends more money to the federal government than it gets back, effectively subsidizing poorer states through massive federal programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP. Our government structure facilitates this redistribution by providing smaller (lower population) states, which tend to be poorer, greater per capita power through the Senate.
Regardless of whether one agrees this redistribution is fair or efficient, or if some of the surplus goes to the not-so-poor political leaders of those states, it clearly does happen. Given this, how would you explain your view that such redistribution is unlikely in practice?
One problem I have with easy secession is that the new states may create trade barriers - whether by way of product standards or tariffs - and migration barriers where before there were none.
> A final question that I have not yet dealt with is how large a region must be in order for my arguments for easy secession to apply.
In Switzerland, given the tradition of solving problems via referendums, secession is somewhat easier. (See, for example, secession of canton Jura from canton Bern.) However, on the level of municipalities, unification prevails over secession by a large margin. AFAIU, the reason is that running a municipal government for a small village is costly and unification thus makes everyone richer.
It is one of the great shames of our increasingly powerful federal government that it makes the case for states to split (secede from each other) much harder than it should be. It would be much easier for say NY to split into Upper NY and Lower NY if they could then just keep chugging along under the same rules of how states interact with each other under the federal government.
The why of that is that the distribution of votes in the federal legislatures is so important now, the decisions of the federal government so far reaching into every day life, that factions fight tooth and nail for a few more representatives here and there. I recall a few years back when there was talk of dividing up California, and how tricky it was to do so while keeping the ratio of senators of each party roughly fixed, etc. When people on the other side of the country have strong preferences over whether CA is one state or three, that is going to make any negotiations vastly more difficult.
The day may come when we have no issues outstanding and pass the time by engaging in multi-decade warfare at heavy loss just to bother the local servs.
Australia has a Grants Commission (https://www.cgc.gov.au/) to administer quite complex rules for how the money collected by the Goods and Services Tax is distributed to the states. Poorer states get a higher proportion than you might expect from their population or GDP.
I've thought some about the specific case of states seceding from the United States because of its rapidly increasing authoritarian trend. The Declaration of Independence, the country's founding document, says: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
I consider it clear that the US government has become destructive of those ends. It's the result not only of Trump personally, but of a system which enables an imperial president and no longer has any effective checks on it. Under such circumstances, it's legitimate for the people of a state to declare that the U.S. government has abandoned its founding principles and no longer holds any moral authority.
Action on this basis is a hypothetical situation which is extremely unlikely to happen. First, we've already seen that Trump is ready to use the military against states that are even mildly non-cooperative. Someone who talks about conquering Greenland won't hesitate to invade Massachusetts. Second, it would take principled leadership of a kind which doesn't exist.
The unlikelihood of anything happening is unfortunate, as I don't see any other hope.
If the public good argument was the reason for aggregating or disaggregating shared services, economies of scale would insure that territories were roughly appropriate in size. This might count as evidence that the public goods argument is primarily a post hoc rationalization.
The next question for me is, are there economies of scale governing the provision of different shared goods by one organization in a region, as opposed to having different organizations provide different goods, each with an appropriate but perhaps different sized territory? The existence and experience of city, count, state, and federal jurisdictions might provide some evidence of the effectiveness of subsidiarity. I'd be curious to learn how well things work when cities can secede from counties, etc. Unfortunately, it seems like it would be difficult to get the experiment moving.
There seems to be an assumption here that everyone in the territory wants to secede? What about people in the territory who still want to be a member of the larger country? And what of the implied rights of people outside the territory to come there freely? That was a right they previously had, so perhaps it's not appropriate to unilaterally take it away?
An example of this I have seen is the attempted Buckhead-Atlanta secession that happened in 2023. The wealthiest part of the city of Atlanta, which accounts for approximately 40% of tax revenue, tried to become a separate city. (State legislature didn’t let them.)
My understanding of the dispute is that both sides understood one region to be subsidizing some of the cost of services for the rest of the city, but disagreed on whether the redistribution was good or bad.
Your mental gymnastics to discover a method of secession,as a fellow scholar, seems entirely academic and impractical.
The only workable method is an unshakable adherence to the principles of liberty. Voluntary human action. No majority can ever have the power to violate individual liberty. The can be no middle ground between life and death.
There were 51 founding members of the United Nations in 1945; now there are 193 members. This is a very good thing. If secession is a bad thing, you'll have the following countries go back to their parent countries: Norway (from Sweden, 1905), Iceland (from Denmark, 1944), Czech Republic & Slovakia (from Czechoslovakia,1991) – not to mention Texas, which would go back to Mexico (1836 secession) and the USA, back to Great Britain.
Your conclusion sounds profound. But exchanging fewer rulers for many is not free association; it’s nothing short of state-tribalism—also known as nationalism.
This has only one inevitable outcome: an “us versus them” mentality and prioritizing the interests of that group above all else. That’s antithetical to individual liberty.
As the Master has written: "[T]he smaller the domain where choices among alternatives are made collectively, the smaller will be the probability that any individual’s preference gets overruled." (Anthony de Jasay, Against Politics, p157.) You likely agree that individual preference is fully satisfied in a market transaction – the smallest sphere of choice of all. Secession reduces that increase in disputes among members of a huge collective.
BTW, I LOVE sounding profound... – especially when I AM profound!
YOU: "require a supermajority for secession, [...] Biafra, for example"
>>I will assume that you FAVORED the Biafran secession, whose suppression by the Nigerian Muslims (1967-70) killed over a million people.
YOU: "how large a region must be[...]. My own answer is that the minimal region consists of one person."
>>In this you concur with von Mises, who wrote: "If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done."
HOWEVER, that's nonsense. A person who declares himself a nation cuts himself off from the society above him. The guiding principle here is the SUBSIDIARITY of Johannes Althusius (1557-1638). Smaller units (counties, cities, homeowners’ associations, and individuals) seek secession only as a tool to realize their true aim, which is autonomy. To truly function at their best, each of them must have the cooperation of associations both greater and smaller than themselves. This sense of APPROPRIATE AUTONOMY IN GOVERNANCE is SUBSIDIARITY, whereby the smallest competent governmental unit exercises precedence over other units.
YOU: "one makes secession easier by persuading lots of people that easy secession is a good thing"
>>Hey, you've been reading my stuff! The Constitution of Non-State Government: Field Guide to Texas Secession, here:
https://store.mises.org/Constitution-of-Non-state-Government-Field-Guide-to-Texas-Secession-P11264.aspx
Very interesting. I could not have possibly imagined anyone seeing tax competition as a bad thing.
Based on my experience, the arguments against secession mostly revolve around ideas of national identity and nationalism (which I find very irrational) but I have rarely seen people object to real practical secession.
For example:
Indian state of Goa was under Portuguese control until 1960s while India got freedom in 1947. Despite joining India, Goa's laws remained Portuguese and continue to remain so for most part. Also, Goan born people continue to get Portuguese citizenship (and by extension EU) if they so desire. As a native of this state I have not seen anyone complain about this at all. If anything everyone thinks this is a great arrangement. However, there is a general opposition of secession from both locals and the Indian government.
I'm curious how your reasoning on "Preventing Benevolent Redistribution" applies to the United States. You mentioned that it's very unlikely for a central government to tax a richer region primarily to benefit a poorer region, suggesting it's rare enough not to worry about. However, where I live, in California, this seems to have been happening for decades and, whatever the intention, the result benefits the "poor people in a poor region."
Every year California sends more money to the federal government than it gets back, effectively subsidizing poorer states through massive federal programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP. Our government structure facilitates this redistribution by providing smaller (lower population) states, which tend to be poorer, greater per capita power through the Senate.
Regardless of whether one agrees this redistribution is fair or efficient, or if some of the surplus goes to the not-so-poor political leaders of those states, it clearly does happen. Given this, how would you explain your view that such redistribution is unlikely in practice?
One problem I have with easy secession is that the new states may create trade barriers - whether by way of product standards or tariffs - and migration barriers where before there were none.
> A final question that I have not yet dealt with is how large a region must be in order for my arguments for easy secession to apply.
In Switzerland, given the tradition of solving problems via referendums, secession is somewhat easier. (See, for example, secession of canton Jura from canton Bern.) However, on the level of municipalities, unification prevails over secession by a large margin. AFAIU, the reason is that running a municipal government for a small village is costly and unification thus makes everyone richer.
Another case to think about: A region with oil secedes from the rest of the country that has no oil.
What a wonderful quote in the footnote!
If only it were still just 10%.
It is one of the great shames of our increasingly powerful federal government that it makes the case for states to split (secede from each other) much harder than it should be. It would be much easier for say NY to split into Upper NY and Lower NY if they could then just keep chugging along under the same rules of how states interact with each other under the federal government.
The why of that is that the distribution of votes in the federal legislatures is so important now, the decisions of the federal government so far reaching into every day life, that factions fight tooth and nail for a few more representatives here and there. I recall a few years back when there was talk of dividing up California, and how tricky it was to do so while keeping the ratio of senators of each party roughly fixed, etc. When people on the other side of the country have strong preferences over whether CA is one state or three, that is going to make any negotiations vastly more difficult.
The day may come when we have no issues outstanding and pass the time by engaging in multi-decade warfare at heavy loss just to bother the local servs.
But that day isn't today.
I think Benevolent Redistribution is more common than you suggest.
Germany has spent trillions of euros to support the East after reunification (https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/German-reunification.pdf).
Australia has a Grants Commission (https://www.cgc.gov.au/) to administer quite complex rules for how the money collected by the Goods and Services Tax is distributed to the states. Poorer states get a higher proportion than you might expect from their population or GDP.
From 1950 to 1984 Italy had the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno to subsidise the poorer south (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassa_per_il_Mezzogiorno).
The EU Cohesion Fund (https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funding/cohesion-fund_en) gives support to members with a GNI per capita below 90% of the EU average.
I've thought some about the specific case of states seceding from the United States because of its rapidly increasing authoritarian trend. The Declaration of Independence, the country's founding document, says: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
I consider it clear that the US government has become destructive of those ends. It's the result not only of Trump personally, but of a system which enables an imperial president and no longer has any effective checks on it. Under such circumstances, it's legitimate for the people of a state to declare that the U.S. government has abandoned its founding principles and no longer holds any moral authority.
Action on this basis is a hypothetical situation which is extremely unlikely to happen. First, we've already seen that Trump is ready to use the military against states that are even mildly non-cooperative. Someone who talks about conquering Greenland won't hesitate to invade Massachusetts. Second, it would take principled leadership of a kind which doesn't exist.
The unlikelihood of anything happening is unfortunate, as I don't see any other hope.
If the public good argument was the reason for aggregating or disaggregating shared services, economies of scale would insure that territories were roughly appropriate in size. This might count as evidence that the public goods argument is primarily a post hoc rationalization.
The next question for me is, are there economies of scale governing the provision of different shared goods by one organization in a region, as opposed to having different organizations provide different goods, each with an appropriate but perhaps different sized territory? The existence and experience of city, count, state, and federal jurisdictions might provide some evidence of the effectiveness of subsidiarity. I'd be curious to learn how well things work when cities can secede from counties, etc. Unfortunately, it seems like it would be difficult to get the experiment moving.
There seems to be an assumption here that everyone in the territory wants to secede? What about people in the territory who still want to be a member of the larger country? And what of the implied rights of people outside the territory to come there freely? That was a right they previously had, so perhaps it's not appropriate to unilaterally take it away?
> Preventing Benevolent Redistribution
An example of this I have seen is the attempted Buckhead-Atlanta secession that happened in 2023. The wealthiest part of the city of Atlanta, which accounts for approximately 40% of tax revenue, tried to become a separate city. (State legislature didn’t let them.)
My understanding of the dispute is that both sides understood one region to be subsidizing some of the cost of services for the rest of the city, but disagreed on whether the redistribution was good or bad.
SECESSION IS THE RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION WRIT LARGE.
Shouting does not make your argument more interesting.
Your mental gymnastics to discover a method of secession,as a fellow scholar, seems entirely academic and impractical.
The only workable method is an unshakable adherence to the principles of liberty. Voluntary human action. No majority can ever have the power to violate individual liberty. The can be no middle ground between life and death.
There were 51 founding members of the United Nations in 1945; now there are 193 members. This is a very good thing. If secession is a bad thing, you'll have the following countries go back to their parent countries: Norway (from Sweden, 1905), Iceland (from Denmark, 1944), Czech Republic & Slovakia (from Czechoslovakia,1991) – not to mention Texas, which would go back to Mexico (1836 secession) and the USA, back to Great Britain.
SECESSION IS THE RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION WRIT LARGE.
Your conclusion sounds profound. But exchanging fewer rulers for many is not free association; it’s nothing short of state-tribalism—also known as nationalism.
This has only one inevitable outcome: an “us versus them” mentality and prioritizing the interests of that group above all else. That’s antithetical to individual liberty.
As the Master has written: "[T]he smaller the domain where choices among alternatives are made collectively, the smaller will be the probability that any individual’s preference gets overruled." (Anthony de Jasay, Against Politics, p157.) You likely agree that individual preference is fully satisfied in a market transaction – the smallest sphere of choice of all. Secession reduces that increase in disputes among members of a huge collective.
BTW, I LOVE sounding profound... – especially when I AM profound!
I have no “masters” only teachers. I reject collectivism, but accept your individual right to live in one.