What do you think of secessionist movements?

Let’s see them survive without federal support for a few years, if they still want to secede, then let them come up with good arguments.

There is no large serious secessionist movement in the US. Remember in 2004 when a lot of people said they would leave if Bush was reelected? Where are they now? All this talk of secession is because they didn’t like the outcome of the last election.

I saw an interesting proposal years ago. It pointed out that there are two Americas; the liberal Great Lakes and East and West coast states and the conservative South and heartland states. In Canada the pattern is similar, the coasts are liberal and the central provinces more conservative. If the liberal states succeeded and became part of Canada and the conservative provinces succeeded and became part of the US everyone would be happier. Of course Quebec would be happier on its own and part of neither.

It’s a toothless threat to withhold a debt based federal subsidy from the states that still maintain the only vestiges of manufacturing. The only negatively affected states would be those service centered economies who like to brag about their net contributing status but fail to understand how their entire economies are buttressed by the cohesion of the national economy and the beneficial effects via the proximity of large financial institutions. Without a larger productive populace to bloodlet… the oasis created by the free flow of capital emanating from such institutions will quickly dry up. I can live without federal IOU’s and mainsteam entertainment… can Washington or New York live without foodstuffs?

I think the right to secede or revolt is spelt out in The Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Unless it has changed in recent years conservative states generally receive more from the federal government than they pay in while liberal states pay more to the federal government than they receive. Basically, liberal states help support conservative states.

Economically I have no doubt that Texas could survive on its own; it has a robust diverse economy. I don’t think the state or Texans would be better off independent from the US though.

The interstate commerce act would no longer apply to Texas but I assume Texas could sign onto NAFTA.

You missed my point. I acknowledged this misnomer as a failure of basic economic principle. Sure… net contributing states furnish more tax dollars… but this is because they have the most capital gains. Wealth is in reality a measure of production or the means of production… although market manipulation has skewed our economy in favor of certain service industries. This is a bigger version of the company store. Company owners kept their workers dependent upon their subsidized goods because they paid them less than a living wage… but the owners could not reproduce what their workers could. The same goes for what you have categorized as liberal states. They are service centered economies… just because they currently enjoy the excess capital due to market manipulation… this has no bearing on their means of production once the dismantling of national bonds has removed their ability to continue market manipulation. I am aware of the endless bloviation blue states like to give this sleight of hand assumption… but it isn’t fooling anyone. The federal government and the financial centers are the parasites.

To simplify I offer this analogy. We have a host and a number of parasites. The host is the industrial centers. The parasites are the financial institutions… service institutions… and the federal government. The capital is the lifeblood. The host is the source of the lifeblood. The parasites are dependent upon the host for their lifeblood. In short time the financial institution parasite has drained a large portion of the lifeblood from the host. The federal government parasite asks the financial institutions for some of the excess nourishment. Once the federal government has been satiated… there is still excess lifeblood. The host who has been depleted of needed lifeblood due to the excesses of the two engorged parasites can either request some of the lifeblood back… or decide to rid himself of the parasites altogether… the latter is the better choice. The threat to withhold the lifeblood by either of the two parasites is the proverbial paper tiger.

A rather skewed analogy. Both the private and public sector generate wealth and value. Our publicly funded space program gave us the technology that fueled personal computers and the internet and the photovoltaic cells they developed for satellites power all kinds of things on Earth. Without NASA we probably wouldn’t have inexpensive digital cameras, MRI machines and lots of other things, The publicly funded Manhattan Project paved the way for nuclear power and medicine. The WWII code breaking was the basis of computer science. The need to detect approaching aircraft gave us radar revolutionizing air travel and meteorology.

While it is popular to demonize the financial sector when they function properly they also add value by managing deposits and loans. The problem now is more that this sector has been able to mold public policy to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else. Any industry can be described in terms of being a service just like any service industry can be described in terms of what they produce. A steel mill could be viewed as a service to turn iron ore into usable alloys just like a bank could be viewed as producing loans as products.

It is a popular view that all wealth and value are generated by the private sector and as you envision government is a parasite but this simply is not the case. Would Apple, Microsoft, Exxon, Walmart etc. be as successful as they are if they had to build roads for their customers, if they didn’t have a stable currency and had to barter or exchange gold for sales and purchases, if they had to provide their own police and fire protection etc.?

When the public and private sector function well they are symbiotic.

There are no generalizations lost on you are there? You are attempting to blur the lines of production and service. You consider bank loans a product? What intrinsic value do they hold? A foundry that takes ore to produce steel billets is not a service… it is production. any service industry can be described in terms of what they produce. No… if the industry produces then it is in the production sector. Service entails those jobs that perform a valuable service but produce nothing of intrinsic value… eg Schooling… Police… Medical… courier… transportation… etc. To varying degrees they may facilitate industry… but we consider these service jobs because they create nothing of intrinsic value. I intentionally omitted the facilitation of industry in my analogy because it served no useful purpose in the analogy… there is no reason to assume that those services that facilitate production require either a bureaucratic government or middle man bank to function. Parasites need not necessarily be detrimental… and the service industry has many beneficial qualities. Service is predicated upon production… without production there is no means of wealth to subsidize service. Hippos suffer egrets because they share a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship… but the hippo is independent of the bird. As long as the symbiosis is mutually beneficial… parasites will be suffered… but there is an old Americanism.. “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” None of this contradicts the premise of my analogy and my original point. Service… be it financial… governmental or facilitative does not exist without the fundamental foundation of wealth stemming from production. The fact that this basic economic principle is lost on you only indicates that any skewing is attributed to the fact that you cannot distinguish service from production.

A parasitic relationship is one where one entity benefits at the expense of another. A symbiotic relationship is one where both entities benefit from their relationship.

People have been arguing about what wealth is and where it comes from since the very beginning.

Bank loans in fact do have an intrinsic value; my own home mortgages have been sold and purchased by other banks several times. You could argue that my mortgage has intrinsic value based on the expectation value or you could argue that I add extrinsic value with my promise to repay but this is all a mater of perspective. You might argue that it has no tangible value though. You could argue that the steel mill produces steel with intrinsic value or you could argue that the iron ore has the intrinsic value and the steel mill adds extrinsic value by making it into steel. Using your terms is the fundamental foundation of wealth the steel or the iron ore?

Two liberal states seem to produce lots of stuff. California produces a lot of food, wine, semiconductors, etc.. while Michigan makes a lot of cars.. What is the basis for your claim that conservative states are production oriented while liberal states are service oriented? I’m not saying this isn’t true but I’ve never heard the claim before.

I’m not trying to be obtuse about the production vs. service question but when it comes down to it this is an artificial distinction. Anything can be viewed as producing wealth or adding value to something else.

“” It is a popular view that all wealth and value are generated by the private sector and as you envision government is a parasite but this simply is not the case. “ - wow, Really. It simply is the case. Government does not create or produce anything. It is completely parasitic and totally reliant on taxpayer revenue of some sort. And if there were no fire, med, or roads, than the private sector would provide those same services and they would be better, and provided at a lower cost. I like you spam, but I just finished re-reading the comunist manifesto, and it starts out by saying that Communism failed. So lets move on.

I think it is something to do with salt water making your brain mushy and stuff.

@filletofspam Intrinsic value is tangible value… we don’t have to argue about it… you are incorrect. Your house has intrinsic value. The value on the mortgage of your house is predicated upon the intrinsic value inherent to the house. The intrinsic value of the mortgage is the 451 degrees in Fahrenheit the paper it is written on gives as it burns for a few seconds or perhaps its turn in the outhouse. Its value is considered as representative. Extrinsic value conferred upon an item adds no tangible value to the item. * Using your terms is the fundamental foundation of wealth the steel or the iron ore? The tangible value of any derivative graduates ontologically as producers imbue the product with time and skill value. Every iteration during the manufacturing process has intrinsic value as it is conducive to a derivative iteration. A begets B begets C and so on. The summary iteration’s intrinsic value tends to have a tangible value in accordance to its place along the chain. There are differing forms of symbiosis. Parasitism is a form of symbiosis… just to clarify. Financial institutions and Federal Bureaucracy are dependent upon the wealth stemming from production for existence. This is not an interdependent symbiotic relationship as you are trying to insinuate. One entity is dependent upon the other… the viability of the dependent entity is contingent upon the usefulness of the dependent entity… the viability of the other is not conditional. My point about the blue state net contributor claim is that much of the capital gains taken from these areas emanates from the large financial institutions. As production is the real measure of wealth… the manipulated gains of the financial centers serves as a smokescreen for the wealth value of the states. The productive centers of blue states… should a large division take place… would do well to separate themselves from the parasites too.