https://unifixion.substack.com/p/political-boundaries-are-no...
What would happen if a landlocked town within Alberta wants to rejoin Canada- how would you handle that?
All the Oil Sands land is treaty land, so First Nations get it if we leave.
Sure, but as one who has done it, moving country is surprisingly hard.
So then you say, ok let's do it by county (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is) instead. Same problem. Even within a county-sized area, you're going to have dissenters who are at risk in the new country. Even within a single town. You can't draw geographic borders around and write laws for swiss-cheese-shaped clumpings of individual people.
I live in a pretty "red" area in a "blue" US state. If Team Red decided that half of my state (including my home) was going to secede into their own Red Utopia, my family would legitimately be in fear for our lives. I don't think secession is ever going to be a viable option in the real, polarized world where political beliefs are peanut butter spread across the geography.
Well, thats politics? The people proposing this are supposed to be considering that. And the people in that position are supposed to be considering that.
Every day there are votes with outcomes people dont want to go along with the ride for. But they do, or they resist, or otherwise.
People are very bad at considering stuff like this. Both voters and politicians.
When I left the UK, a former acquaintance was very confused that their support of something they thought was "just politics" led to me having no interest in continuing to talk to them.
I very much doubt that David Cameron or Theresa May expected a newspaper to have a front-page headline calling judges "Enemies of the People"[0], similarly for a half the politicians who have been milkshaked[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemies_of_the_people_(headlin...
Let's not let politics' meaning become so diffuse it's just free speech by another name. Herein "politics" seems to be too inconsequential for a far more consequential result than cycling out party A for B for a few years would have.
I've half joked before that brexit was the only solution Cameron et al saw left because they didnt have a way to hold Brussel's paper pushers to account. Taking your ball and going home is not bold leadership: it's an admission one's argument and solution is weak.
All of Scotland voted against leaving the EU. Every single county has voted no. And yet it still got dragged out.
So I guess the answer is - people get told to shut up and deal with it.
I find it sort of fascinating because people really do have a fanaticism about this that they don't have for other political artifacts. Nationalism is a powerful force. And people will special-plead themselves silly arguing why one group should be given self-determinism and others shouldn't, including invoking federal laws, untestable predictions about future events, etc. But when it comes to other politics, they revert back to a globalist position.
On the flip side, separatists are often driven by nationalistic interests as well - look at Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries as fantastic examples of this.
Claimed identity isn't a suicide pact and consent of the governed isn't equally geographically distributed.
AB sees, correctly, an inordinate amount of tax per capita go out for the privilege of policies intended to kneecap that region's development. The justifications for those policies (whether you agree with them or not) matter less than the fact they're being imposed from a condition of moral hazard.
Hence, the people of AB might vote to ban the people of ON/QC from imposing their laws; that's what separation is and why it happens.
Not only that, but the Feds typically use their outsized tax revenue from Alberta to “invest” in Quebec to buy votes via propping up unviable businesses, subsidies, outsized proportion of public sector jobs, and federal spending in general.
You can find many examples of specific programs where Québec gets the federal government’s money in incredible amounts. But you add all these programs together and you still come up short per person compared to Ontario. Why?
The Southern Ontario car sector.
When you consider the tiny detail of actually contributing to federal finances, in the past 20 years alone Quebec has received ~360 billion more than it contributed, whereas Ontario has received ~232 billion LESS than it contributed.
Nearly half a trillion difference between the two, and nothing to do with the auto industry whatsoever.
And all the First Nations treaties are with the Crown and predate Alberta.
I’m 100% with the political philosopher Bertrand Russel on this topic: borders are arbitrary, and a benevolent world government/federation of cultures would not restrict your movement or sense of belonging.
But! But how many people must vote yes? What percentage of abstention? If 60% vote to leave, but half the people didn’t vote, only 30% of the yes is valid.
I don’t think this should be taken lightly by populist movements. To me, Brexit has shown us exactly what the dangers are of a non- or weirdly-qualified majority.
Unless you get everyone with a stake on board, which is hard, and accept it will take a long while to unwind, it's irresponsible. And if you aren't willing to do that work, just pack your bags and leave.
I’d love to see stats on countries merging vs splitting, may sumptuous is 1 to 50 at least.
Seems like a hard to prove statement.
It's kind of obvious that borders are not a physical phenomenon but a social construct.
Not so fast. They are in a union with other provinces ergo they have a say.
If nonetheless in some asinine way they secede, will they take their portion of Canada's debt, and other liabilities?
Won't all other provinces require them to negotiate a border, security, and trade policy? Surely they can't expect to be separate yet equal to BC or even the NWT?
That's exactly what Putin thinks, right? "I'm one of the people; I wanna change borders!" :)
Nice NED propaganda.