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Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

> As an outsider I like this idea of being able to vote yourself out

"Voting with your feet" is an option available to almost everyone except North Koreans.

If there are no good options to migrate to, that doesn't provide a way out. And, as a migrant, that's ignoring the cost of migration (e.g. the decades it takes to lose a speech accent and not be seen as "the foreigner", assuming your ethnicity allows for that anyway)

I'm not at all sure if voting to splice a country should be a thing you can do, maybe there is more merit in some international right to a proportional vote on something (no FPTP system) so you get better representation of all opinions, but simply saying "you can always go somewhere else" seems a bit too simple

It's actually not available to most people that live in any third world country, otherwise migration would be significantly higher than it already is.

Regardless, "voting with your feet" is an individual action. Voting at home is a collective one, representing the will of not just you but the people from the place that you come from and were born into. Only one of those reflects the ideals of democracy, if that's really the ideal being strived for

> It's actually not available to most people that live in any third world country

Well sure it is. It isn't easy. There's a difference between available and easy.

It’s also a very anti-democratic option whether taken voluntarily or forced.

When you leave you cut all important ties to the polity, you surrender your ability to participate in democratic processes and you revoke control over yourself and your property. It’s the nearest thing to direct violence you can do without crossing that line

> When you leave you cut all important ties to the polity, you surrender your ability to participate in democratic processes and you revoke control over yourself and your property. It’s the nearest thing to direct violence you can do without crossing that line

If that's true then isn't it better individuals do this "almost violence" only to themselves, of their own volition? Rather than impose it on everyone living in the territory? Committing "almost violence" against others, for no fault of theirs, doesn't become fair just because it was voted on, right?

Do individuals matter in a democracy?

How does one draw new political borders that way? There is practically zero unclaimed land.

You move someplace that aligns with your preferences.

And if there arent? Why are existing nation lines static?

If literally no one else on earth thinks like you, how will you win a referendum?

The people who think like me (in this example) are the people voting on the referendum!

While certainly true, it does not fix the problem (but makes it worse): if the govt does not allow you to self govern and/or break-off, and therefor people that do not like the govt "vote with their feet" and leave, there will be less people left to effect the changes.

This happened in ww2 Germany. many left. Hitler never got 51% of votes. Yet he managed to take over.

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