Hacker News Reader

It's a historic quirk that the US is a single country. It hardly feels like one most days.

The same is true of Canada, but to a far greater extent since Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal have a permanent veto on whatever the rest of the country wants. The US political system, for all its other faults, has successfully avoided this problem.

It is not a surprise that region can't find anyone else (in the rest of the economic zone over which it claims dominion) willing to die for its interests, especially when their interests have been revealed to be nothing but "loot the rest of the nation".

We have the opposite problem, where if you live in NYC or LA your vote basically doesn't matter at the national level

Yet, that compromise means NYC and LA can still field an all-volunteer army of people who tend not to be from NYC and LA.

Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, demonstrably, cannot do that.

Which of the two strategies do you think give the cities a greater chance of survival?

american: you're the historical quirk!

canadian: no, you're the historical quirk!

native american: you're both historical twerps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com