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Comment by petschge | Hacker News Reader

What will stop rural Alabama from devolving into a third word country? Or do you still expect the successful urban blocks to pay for the backwaters blocks, but now without any input into their political structure?

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Fun fact: Alabamans are richer than most Western Europeans. But that aside, I’m proposing letting Alabamans govern Alabama and Marylanders govern Maryland. The states wouldn’t subsidize each other or have input into the laws governing each other’s internal politics. Maybe there would be a military coalition like NATO.

To be honest, apart from huffing and puffing, I really find there isn't really any motivation for an actual divide of the country at the end of the day. Also, the divide is often within states, not just amongst the states, just look at California.

I would argue reducing federal control is step one. Local governments may want to take more power instead. Take Texas: many cities have become stark-blue due to immigration from south of the border. If they wish to pass certain policies, let them. If the rural areas wish to pass different policies, let them.

America was consciously designed with these divisions in mind. By federalizing the minimum number of things, we reduce the number of things on which we must agree.

> America was consciously designed with these divisions in mind. By federalizing the minimum number of things

If we are going to fetishize the decisions of the architects of the design of our government (which several of them would be appalled by), we should at least understand them: the Constitution (even in its original form, though the subsequent evolution also reflects this) is an embodiment of the idea that the correct amount of federalization at time n+1 may be significantly greater than seemed (and perhaps even was) ideal at time n, rather than the idea that federalization should be aggressively minimized. (Radical minimization of the federal power was the design of the Articles of Confederation and the impetus for the revision effort that produced the Constitution as a fairly strong rejection of that approach.)

> the correct amount of federalization... may be significantly greater than seemed

Wrong. This is why the Constitution enumerates a few, very specific powers and says that the rest are reserved to the states and to the people.

> Radical minimization of the federal power was the design of the Articles of Confederation

Wrong. Congress couldn't even regulate foreign trade; there was no federal power. When the federal government cannot represent the nation as a whole to foreign powers, there is no true federal government. We moved to a Constitution with minimum federal power because that solution didn't work.

Support for secession is 25% nationwide, and 35% in the Southwest: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four.... The national divide exacerbates intrastate divides. Last year in Maryland, Larry Hogan, a Republican, won 28% of the vote in PG county, an urbanized, high-income, predominately black county adjacent to DC. He won 32% of the vote in Baltimore. We fight over stuff like highways versus transit—we’re not paralyzed in this state of affairs where the sides have such divergent values that they regard each other as literally evil.

If people are so concerned about the so called 'prosperous' blue states subsidizing red states, how about the actual people in the blue states subsidizing policies and people they might not actually agree with?

3rd world country? Just looking at employment, Alabama has a lower unemployment rate than NY, CA, WA.

They seem to be doing just fine, jobs wise.

> They seem to be doing just fine, jobs wise.

I think there's a problem comparing the official job numbers with "3rd world country" conditions.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

It's not just in Alabama![1]

"If I could add, the other thing that just struck me ... but I'm sorry, California is a rich state, by any measures, the United States is a rich country, and to see these deplorable conditions that the government is allowing, by international human rights standards, it's unacceptable. I'm guided by human rights law."

[1]https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/rapporteur-United-Nat...

Regardless of the governmental scheme picked, rural populations have been shrinking, which decreases their political influence. There are several states losing population.

Ultimately, you're going to have to count on the general public's goodwill.

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