Why Scotland looks like the canary in the independence coal mine

I hear the UK say, "If you stay with us, we promise to give you more power!" Well, why don't you go ahead and give it NOW, and that would probably swing Scotland to a firm "No". Which makes me think the UK is lying, and Scotland would get no substantial improvement in autonomy.

1. This is great, throwing it back to government for the people and really should shake up big federal governments.

2. Or maybe not so great, because of number of pitfalls. Getting something like secession right is hard, chances are economies will suffer hard. There will be some superpowers that will never allow this is current political climate such as China, Russia, and potentially India. This will be effectively strengthening their positions. If countries split up into smaller states, while local governance will likely improve, international gridlock will not.

It does still baffle me, though, that economic conservatism is seen as a force for the poor in America, whereas elsewhere in the world, in this article's words, evoking "socialist utopia... [is] an effort to stave off the spiraling growth of inequality."

edit: I don't understand how I could missed it but the article does mention the flemish region and Catalonia (I wish they would have compared it though).

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/09/the-refe...

"“I think there is going to be double, triple, quadruple countries in the coming years,” Andreessen told Sarah Lacy at Thursday night’s PandoMonthly in San Francisco.

The cofounder of venture firm Andreessen Horowitz noted that the borders of today’s countries are in some cases arbitrary, pointing to Iraq, Syria, and much of Africa as artificial constructs. In the last few decades, the world has seen the emergence of a litany of new countries, and he sees no reason why that splintering is going to slow down.

“You’re going to get a much larger number of countries,” he said, before noting that the proliferation of nations could be a positive force in the long term, measured by a span of 100 years or more.

“The transition is going to be very painful,” he said, “but I think ultimately it’s going to be very healthy.”

Does anyone reckon that if Scotland was to go its own way, the rather leftist government there would withdraw from prior cooperation with the NSA/GCHQ? There's already been an unofficial proposal to give asylum to Edward Snowden if the referendum passes. Or would the status quo continue, except there with Six Eyes?

http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/scots-independence/60436/sc...

Hard cash versus pollsters.

Thoughts?

Smaller countries means more borders where movement of goods or people can be tracked (papers please).

Smaller countries have less resources to defend themselves from multinational lawsuits enabled by free-trade agreements.

For many particularly in the developed world, globalization and its pressures, particularly economic, have made it clear to individuals that -- perhaps ironically -- it is every person, every community for oneself.

Those individuals and communities are beginning to respond.

If this trend leads to an increasing push not just for individual but also communal self-reliance, I don't see that as a bad thing, at this point.

It can cap or limit some of the current exploitation. And re-introduce some redundancy into what have apparently become very fragile and risky systems and dependencies.

A primary push should be for energy independence. Once you have that, it's much more difficult for external interests to jerk you around. And hopefully the initiative can grow and maintain a significant domestic technical sector.

There are also perils, and I'm no political nor sociological expert. But as with municipal broadband in the U.S., pushback against intellectual property excesses in many places, and a thousand other things, more in the general public are finding that, for them, "bigger" is NOT "better". Not currently. Not, increasingly, for a while, now.

Independence is one means of drawing boundaries to that "bigger" that seems to just keep squeezing them.

P.S. I'll add that I've read the OP article, now. Having done so, my comment stands unchanged.