Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

...some parts of the world desperately need the modern equivalent of "regional empires", it's clear that lots of small nation states have a tendency to degenerate into these kinds of dystopias. Some Central Asian Federation could sort out lots of issues and drastically increase the quality of life and freedoms of such people.

The ironic things is that we seem to recognize it and try and do this exactly in the places where it's not really needed: take the "European Federation" ideal, it probably wouldn't be a net plus since almost all European nations produce basically functional states and provide OK levels of individual freedom. Otoh something like a Middle-Eastern Federation and a Central Asian Federation could solve a ton issues and really be useful. A bunch of mega-states would surely improve lives of people in most of Africa too.

Dunno why we're so taboo ridden and afraid to be open-minded when it comes to geo-politics on a planetary scale, we're stuck with these two horrible ideas of (1) independent nation-states and (2) general-globalism, that are neither any good, and we're totally afraid to think outside the box...

View on HN

There isn't a single definition of empire in the dictionary that looks like something that would improve the situation of people living in those countries. Indeed there is an empire in that area of the world. It's called Russia. And speaking of empires, Russia isn't the only one. The U.S is an empire. Try to ask south Americans about it. We still live in an age of empires.

I'm usually Russia-phobic, but would you rather live in Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan etc., or in Russia? And mega-states like U.S. and Canada and Australia clearly provide a decent standard of living and good wide labour market to thrive on for the people living in them...
And south American w.r.t. the U.S.: I'm really not that knowledgeable about geopolitics in this part of the world.

Well, regarding South America there is a generation that grew up reading "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" (even the author Eduardo Galeano has criticized his own work).
Blaming all the region problems on the "imperialists" and stuff like that is a line of thought still very alive and kicking around here - it is way easier to blame some imaginary entity than taking responsibility for your present situation. It is very inline with the current "outrage porn" culture.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp...

That’s not my point. I am not blaming anything on imperialism (without quotes). The world geopolitics are to these days structured and governed by empires. We don’t have emperors but there are still empires. If you happen to be a citizen of a country that is in the vicinity of a powerful and big state (size matters a lot too) then you are out of luck. What I said regarding Russia, America also applies to China, Europe (guess why the European Union was created) and to lesser degree Turkey and Iran.

Azerbaïdjan and Afghanistan are two very different countries on a lot of levels.

The primary goal of the European “Federation” is not to create a “better” super-state, but to prevent war amongst the states by creating a common economic dependence and by aligning mutual interests.

Yeah... this is sort of a dangerous idea, constant but "restrained" (like in "let's be gentlemen and don't kill millions or hundreds-of-thousands, instead mostly keep it up to tens-of-thousands") interstate conflict was probably the catalyst for the rapid advances of European culture and civilization. EU needs to catalyze internal economic competition/warfare as a replacement of violent conflict imo, we're too addicted to some kind of violence to just go dry on it, so we need to move most of this violence into economy, culture, education etc.

While I find the way you expressed this disgusting (the "restrained" aspect of what you refer to only extended to the aristocracy, the common folk was treated about as well as cattle on average, sometimes better sometimes worse), the little kernel of good idea in this comment is exactly what confederations of states like the EU enable: link the economies, make freedom of movement possible, break down all obstacles to market competition while preserving regional identities and diversity.
Note that empires do NOT do this, as they need to force stability,unity and legitimacy from the top, while confederations of democratic states get their legitimacy from the bottom (if designed well. There is lots of improvement left in the road towards democratization of the EU).

It's not really clear that large empires are better than national states: two nearby countries that ended up in an empire, xinjiang and tibet, are not really in a much better state, and the previous empire that contained turkmenistan, was pretty dystopian too, at least at times. On the other hand some of the national states that broke off from USSR are better off now, than they would have been if they stayed with Russia.

The word you are looking is Soviet Russia. It's not a panacea. European Union countries would likely be as developed if they were in a single market union. Governments have the control on the population that they can afford. Poorer societies are more prone to crime, less law compliant. Poorer societies can't afford a police state.

So you're claiming the one area that has tried "federation" doesn't need it because they're all functional governments? Do you not think there might be a cause and effect there?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com