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Comment by neverminder | Hacker News Reader

I see this as a lose-lose scenario. If Scotland votes to split - it is effectively the end of UK as we've come to know it for a very long time. Fracturing is almost always a bad idea and bigger countries almost always do better than the smaller ones. If they vote to remain that will be bad as well, because it will embolden the politicians (tories in this specific case) that they can get away with anything (breaking up the country with their disastrous Brexit in this particular case). I am a european living in UK.

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> Fracturing is almost always a bad idea and bigger countries almost always do better than the smaller ones.

This is demonstrably false: roughly half of the top ten countries ranked by standard of living and quality of life are small European nations about the same size as Scotland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

There's a much better argument for it historically because being a small country tended to end up getting you invaded or otherwise subservient to one or the other of your bigger neighbors. But that really an issue with most European countries today.

Larger/richer countries still tend to have more control over their own destinies but that doesn't necessarily translate to quality of living standards.

I think neverminder meant that, amongst countries that separate, the larger of the new countries will generally be better off than their smaller neighbour. Your list doesn't address this point.

Examples would include Pakistan-Bangladesh; Czech Republic-Slovakia; and Sudan-South Sudan.

Your own list has a counterpoint: Bangladesh has a better HDI than Pakistan. Republic of Ireland also has an higher HDI than the UK and they were in much worse state than the UK when they became independent.

The lose scenario of a split already happened with the Brexit. Now it is time to save as much as possible. Scotland wants to stay in the EU and has interests diverging from England and Wales. Why should Scotland stay with them to make them stronger?

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