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Comment by jaxomlotus | Hacker News Reader

You know I was about to mock this as ridiculous and not worth any media attention, but then I stopped to realize I mocked the notion of a Trump presidency as ridiculous too.

I don't think there is any policitcal scenario that can be deemed far-fetched anymore in this alternate timeline we branched into.

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There is nothing ridiculous about either.

Peaceful secession is the only humane way forward and the sooner people starting thinking about it seriously, the better for all of us.

And what if, say, next election, again someone you don't like gets elected ?

Bay area secession ?

Of course any idea can be reduced to absurdity but, as a general concept, I have no problem with city-states and free cities and would be very happy to see them revived as a widespread form of sovereignty.

Federalism is a perfectly good system for distributing sovereignty within a shared security arrangement so as to avoid the wars that naturally erupt between perfectly soverign states. Unfortunately we have spent the past 100 years eroding local and state sovereignty by treating national politics as the only place where meaningful government happens.

Devolution is a much saner path than sessesion.

I agree that federalism would be preferable in the case of the United States in theory, but experience has shown that in practice power tends to concentrate in the highest level of sovereignty.

I don't share your pessimism regarding wars and smaller sovereign states. I think a world filed with relatively small Switzerland-style nations would be a less bombed world.

In my 'conspiracy' timeline, Patri Friedman convinced Thiel to back Trump in order to turn California into a seastead.

The more you know...

It all makes sense now.

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