> Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> > In Britain, at least, some secessionists are
> > asserting themselves -- in Scotland and Wales.)
>
>
> But don't you see this as one state fragmenting into smaller ones? It's
> hardly a leap towards libertarianism, seems like much the same system
> writ small to me, although I'm not overly familiar with the way the
> scottish system is set up (despite living with a scot). Or do you think
> this is the start of some sort of full-fledged devolutionary process?
>
> Dwayne
>
This is right. Certainly, breaking up big states into little ones is
progress of a sort because small states can simply do less mischief than big
ones. (Also public choice problems are less severe in a smaller polity). The
problem is that most people who want to secede from a modern state simply
want to set up a slightly smaller modern state. Quite apart from the
problems this causes with minorities who don't want to secede or want to
themselves secede from the new entity (many, many examples come to mind)
what is not being addressed is the fundamental problem - the nature of the
modern state. The key problem for me is the concept of "sovereignty", the
idea that there can be only one ultimate undivided source of authority in a
state. When this is combined with nationalism which merges alliegance and
identity the results are disastrous. We need to find a way of severing the
links between territory, sovereignty and identity. On Scotland, the Scots
have been given what Billy Connolly aptly calls a "pretendy Parliament",
which has had the effect of handing over the Scots to the mercies of the
Scottish Labour Party - God help them! Steve Davies.
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