IMO, this is one of the main strengths of the US: you have 50 different options to live according to your values and beliefs, and relatively little friction if you decide to move to a state that better reflects them.
Yes, there are 50 states. But besides some superficial differences, they tend to cluster in terms of policy. So, as a state slides further towards one extreme, it's not easy to decide which straw will break the camel's back. Because it could always be worse elsewhere, and is it really worth the trouble?
True when compared to emigrating to another country, which is much harder than most assume.
Moving is extremely disruptive if you have a lot of family and friends nearby, though. You go from having a huge community and social circle to almost nothing. Maybe some work friends to begin seeding a new social life, but everything has to be rebuilt.
This is why “if you don’t like it, you can leave” (the parent commenter didn’t claim this, I’m being it up separately) is not a good argument for tyrannical government decisions that get imposed on citizens of a location. They are invested in that place and have built lives there. Telling them to abandon it all and start over somewhere else is not a reasonable response. Some things have to be fought.
- Wyoming
- Idaho
100mi doesn't get you into the population center of either state. the western US is BIG, really you're talking like 1k miles to get anywhere that's meaningfully different from utah. Depending on where you live in utah, that might not get you out of the state either.
It's true that both cases will get you to parts of the state that are probably more conservative than Salt Lake City, or in Nevada's case, have literally nothing there. But Boulder is about an 8 hour drive from Salt Lake City, and has a dramatically different culture and political climate. If you look at past instances of people fleeing political repression, most of them would be thrilled to be able to drive a day without crossing a national border and live in a completely different situation.
As far as I can tell for similar laws (e.g. age verification), once one state moves ahead on some controversial issue and gets away with it at the Supreme Court level, others follow suit very quickly, and then your odds quickly go to 50:50 when you thought you were picking out the best of 50.
Culturally, especially in the US, the idea of packing up your bags, going somewhere else, or even to a new frontier used to be a big part of its appeal even and national identity. This isn't in contrast to fighting for things, in fact people do neither and that's probably related because both involve a level of risk and starting over that's now entirely foreign.
Especially in a world that is changing as fast as ours does now not being able or unwilling to start new or reinvent yourself is a big problem. It was the internal superpower of the US compared to other countries that it had so many people who were just willing to go and build a city, or even a state or a new religion somewhere just for the sake of it.
That word "relatively" is doing a lot of work in this phrase. 50 options sounds great until you think about the realities of it. As someone who's moved around a half dozen times, shared "values and beliefs" pales in comparison to the practical concerns of jobs, family, climate.
1. Move.
At some point, you have to get a new driver's license in your new state and transfer your car registration there to use their license plate instead of your old state's. Those are "mechanical" paperwork transactions, though. You show up at the Department of Motor Vehicles with proof of your new address and they scowl at you and then issue the new one. You don't have to ask permission: so long as you meet the local requirements to do those things (like pass the local driving test, have a car that passes the appropriate inspections), and have the right paperwork (like proof of address, proof of ownership of the car, etc.), you'll get it. And that's the "hard" part.
I've moved between states multiple times. With the sole exception of car-related stuff, the only difference between moving between a different apartment in the same complex and moving across the country is that you have to pay your taxes somewhere different the next year.
but it is easier than Europe would be, for sure. yeah there is free movement but often wildly different language, customs, and processes.
meanwhile there is WellsFargo, Safeway, and a DMV office in WA and MD
I personally would love to live in a western state like oregon, arizona, or new mexico where I feel like there is an appropriate balance between freedom, geography, and government for my lifestyle.
Also a weakness. Utah, one of the most stunningly beautiful states in the union, is completely under the grip of a regressive theocracy that has controlled nearly every aspect of life there for over a century. Really sucks.
I think it's also doing well re: reproductive rate. I expect it to continue be a thriving place for years to come.
I'd take SLC over all of Mississippi, for example.
The VPN thing skews that a little more -- and is hilarious given how it's like the state that is largest consumer of internet porn -- but the city is far more livable than people give it credit.
Yeah fair you got me there
Yes, moving is possible, and easier than switching countries. But the biggest strength of the U.S. is not that people can move, but that the blast radius is contained. The strength is being able to think later "I'm glad we didn't try that everywhere at once." The strength is being able to experiment, not necessarily have states aligned to with all there residents needs within a certain threshold.
Uprooting a well grown tree isn't easy.
If you hitch-hike from California to Vermont while feeding your kids whatever rats and river water you can dredge up and then set up a tent in the forest until you can score a job at Dollar General, then you are an evil neglectful bastard and the state will be on your ass and take your kids away.
You might be better off actually moving countries if you are broke. Because for whatever reason it is better tolerated because you can just say you were broke and your children went through hard times because the last country was evil or something.
According to whom?
The immense hardship endured by migrants isn't a badge of glory, but the direct result of a global economic system designed to extract wealth from the global south to enrich the global north.
The current economic disparity between the United States and the countries to its south is not an accident. The wealth of the United States, like much of the Western Hemisphere, was built on a foundation of 500 years of ongoing theft—specifically through the colonization and theft of indigenous lands, and the mass kidnapping and wage theft of the Atlantic slave trade. The governments and agencies that now police the borders are institutions built on this stolen land.
The US imposition of NAFTA allowed heavily subsidized American agribusiness giants to flood the Mexican market with cheap corn, which decimated Mexican agricultural communities, drove small farmers off their land, and triggered massive waves of migration.
In Central America, the CIA sponsored the 1954 coup in Guatemala to overthrow a government that was attempting land reforms that threatened the profits of the American-owned United Fruit Company. The US government also heavily funded brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala that committed massacres and genocide against their own citizens. The US government effectively bankrolled the destruction of these countries, and then militarized its border to punish the survivors fleeing the devastation.
The migrant walking from Ecuador is not a "glorious immigrant" immune to state violence; they are treated as walking meat by human trafficking cartels and hunted by authorities.
It's not that they haven't suffered risks and dangers and "500 years" of historical grudges. It's that the main risk a broke American parent has of moving their children while broke is that they're going to run afoul of negligence and abuse laws of the US that don't allow you to live in the rough while hopping freight trains or however broke people are crossing the continent. If your kids get ripped away in a river you are going to jail, if you're caught living in tents in the forest or desert then child services is going to be contacted. Immigrants get to bypass this on the way to the US -- if their children dies in a river in the Darien it either gets ignored by greater society or written in a news blurb about how brave and unfortunate they were (maybe alongside your sad story about NAFTA -- your sob story narrative makes my point). This means they can actually move while broke and they might actually be able to get away with it in the eyes of the state.
I still think it's ridiculous that you refer to ICE detention as "kid gloves."
Again, rather than ignoring migrant families, the US government actively targets them; ICE uses Palantir surveillance software to track down and arrest hundreds of parents and relatives simply because they stepped forward to sponsor their unaccompanied migrant children, and now thousands of children are currently in the US foster care system because their parents were deported without them.
You are right, though, that marginalized US citizens face aggressive state intervention and child separation. The US criminal justice and child welfare systems frequently target poor domestic parents, using the threat of child removal to coerce them or punish them.
For example, marginalized women facing minor charges or accused of drug use have faced secret child welfare proceedings, incarceration, and having their newborns placed directly into the foster care system. Domestically, the carceral system routinely tears families apart, leaving hundreds of thousands of parents locked in jail and missing from their children's lives.
You're going to point out that's illegal in random latin american country too. Except the state apparatus is far weaker and more corrupt there, so there's actually a chance to bribe your way around it or just pass through the cracks.
The whole point is to end up with your family in the end, except if nature or criminals take them away, but if in the end the state breaks up the surviving family then you're heading for a dead end regardless. Latin American countries aren't breaking up families to anything near the extent the US does. The USA's bread and butter is breaking up families using the might of the state and they can't do that while you're out of their jurisdiction. If you can stay out of their jurisdiction for most of the move, you can bypass the CPS apparatus in the meanwhile. It actually might be better to go through Mexico to move from say California to Texas while broke, for that reason.
If you want to point out post-move if you are present illegally that might get you tossed out, then sure. But that's the case about everywhere but Argentina, Brazil, and back-bush Africa. A domestic family can also get tossed out for being here illegally (renounced citizenship, or whatever). That's another red herring though. ICE doesn't enforce moving without money, they enforce being present in the USA illegally (or, occasionally, legally, a la Goode / Pretti). If you get the visa to enter the USA, they won't give a single shit about all the kids that got ripped into some river in the Darien, died of some tropical disease while camped without mosquito nets, or all manner of other things they would damn a domestic family for.
No, I'm not. I'm done reading your lazy bullshit.
But of course you aren't reading this as you are "done reading." Unless of course, you are a liar. Only you know, deep inside, but I think I know the answer. And the fact you have to quietly live with that, or else betray your own statement, is quite amusing thought for me to end this conversation on, so I truly appreciate the entertainment you've given from your last response.
If Utah wants a firewall, they can erect one at their borders. It's crazy of them to expect everyone else to do their work for them.
It is unrealistic for many to move states or live in their ideal state, but we don't even live in the "50 different options" world anymore.
Corporate and NGO interest groups are seeing to it that your politicians and journalists are controlled from the municipal to national levels. Tribal two-party politics has reduced our world to "red" and "blue" states, and plenty authoritarian legislation has bipartisan support.
You also can't just keep playing whack-a-mole and uprooting your entire life each time a state you considered safe suddenly introduces legislation you disagree with.
Some would even argue that it isn't very patriotic to flee a community and allow it to rot instead of participating in its liberation.
Even then as you see with the abortion ban, the folks on that side will not be satisfied without a federal level policy and they are just whittling away state by state.
Allowing gays to marry if they want, does that count as oppressing rural Christians?
ADA regulations are good example, and also a common punching bag of the rural right in a blue state. Making sure everything is handicapped-accessible is important in a restaurant in San Francisco with a visitor pool of about 7 millions. It makes zero sense when it is the only restaurant in a town of 100, none of whom are disabled*. Nobody's available to build the necessary accommodations, and nobody's going to use them.
Gun regulations too. When you come in contact with thousands of people routinely and some of them might wish to kill you, limiting the ability to buy guns is important. When hunting and scaring off wild animals is a large part of your lifestyle, you can go a week without seeing another human, and the local police department takes 2 hours to get to you? Now you're just taking away essential tools for survival.
The "red" people in blue states are opposed to the freedoms people in blue states have, while the "blue" people in red states are denied freedoms people in blue states have.
So, while people are "trapped" in blue states, they generally aren't suffering by being denied rights.
Show me a state that will invalidate the "mandatory arbitration" clauses and let me sue Google (in small claims court) if they lock me out of my account or falsely take down my video on copyright grounds. You won't find that because it's impossible.
There are minor differences between states, like gun or drug ownership. Or various tax levels. But that's about it.
There ought to be some significant level of cohesion between constituent states in a federation (like the US or India) or even a confederation (like the EU or Switzerland), else the common market and the common law system won't be able to function. It should not be overdone though.
Of course, SCOTUS may not see it that way. But clearly this is an imposition of the age verification strategy in project 2025, which is meant to be an imposition of Christian religious values on everyone.