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Comment by MarkPNeyer | Hacker News Reader

The kings who stole money from their nobles soon found themselves surrounded by nobles who were all suddenly impoverished, and bordered by newly wealthy neighboring countries whose banking sectors and suddenly and inexplicably took off. See, for example, the fail of Spain and subsequent rise of the Dutch.

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> kings who stole money from their nobles soon found themselves surrounded by nobles who were all suddenly impoverished

The historical record is littered with banking panics from over-leveraged crowns. The crown didn’t go bankrupt. They just busted their bankers. (If the king asks for a loan, you give it.)

> the fail of Spain and subsequent rise of the Dutch

Spain lost the Netherlands due to internecine warfare [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Spanish_Successio...

you probably meant to link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War

The Netherlands were the richest region in Europe since the late middle ages (at least). They were also the richest province of the Spanish empire during it’s height. So yes if California or NY declared independence and left the US would become economically weaker.

Also Spain didn’t exactly steal money from their nobles (generally tax burden in the Netherlands was considerably higher than in most other places) they just flooded Europe with silver from the Americas which over time resulted in massive inflation.

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