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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

I had two nearly simultaneous thoughts:

1. This is great, throwing it back to government for the people and really should shake up big federal governments.

2. Or maybe not so great, because of number of pitfalls. Getting something like secession right is hard, chances are economies will suffer hard. There will be some superpowers that will never allow this is current political climate such as China, Russia, and potentially India. This will be effectively strengthening their positions. If countries split up into smaller states, while local governance will likely improve, international gridlock will not.

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I would add the US to number 2.

The US does not allow states to secede. Guam or Puerto Rica may have better chances though...

From wikipedia:

"In Texas v. White, the United States Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional, while commenting that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession."

The US Civil War was essentially fought over the right of states to unilaterally withdraw from the union (the answer was no).

The constitution could be amended to explicitly allow this but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon. So yes, the US is firmly in #2.

Ok, but Scotland is not withdrawing "unilaterally" anyway: the government in Westminster specifically authorized this referendum. If there was some serious secession movement in the US along the lines of Scotland's, I don't think the federal government is going to send General Sherman in this time.

I'm voting "Yes", but I must emphasise how much credit the UK as a whole deserves for handling this in a completely peaceful and fairly civilised way.

Totally disagree. Considering what flimsy pretext the US routinely invades countries since WWII, a local invasion would just make it that much more expedient. Look at how many well-enfranchised groups have made hay on the US war machine.

s/now/not/ (I wouldn't normally comment on a typo, but this changes the meaning to the opposite of what was intended, so I was confused for a moment)

Changed. I'm working and I was trying to get a point off before my next meeting.

I must admit that I am rather surprised of the amount if international attention that the referendum here is getting - Scotland is a small, relatively unimportant (i.e. we're not London) part of the UK which is itself a relatively minor economic and military power.

Given the stream of world political and business leaders who have felt the need to pass comment (inevitably in favour of the "No" campaign) I really do wonder what is going on.

[NB OK OK I shouldn't have said "minor economic power" and the UK has superb (but horribly equipped and under-funded) armed forces].

I'm not surprised at all... It's not every day that a country democratically permits succession. There has only been, what? One new country since the end of the Cold War? Further, while Scotland isn't London, it has a large standing in culture for a number of English speaking countries due to it being the background of many people there, and further it still has some big economic issues surrounding it. 90% of the UK's North Sea Oil anyone?

If you ignore Cold War fallout (though the breakup of Yugoslavia continues to this day), and sham countries like South Ossetia, then there's at least Timor-leste and South Sudan. Timor is not in great shape, but appatently getting better, and certainly better off independent. Remains to be seen if South Sudan is better off by itself or not, but I'm not planning a vacation there any time soon.

There are also the Czech Republic and Slovakia which split up peacefully.

As I said, maybe one since the Cold War. I knew South Sudan, but didn't think about Timor-leste. So if you take out the various eastern bloc states breaking up that's only two new countries.

Isn't much of the UK's nuclear arsenal also in Scotland?

The UK's fleet of 4 Trident submarines is based in a sea-loch (fjord) not far from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. As you might expect, this isn't a particularly popular policy for a lot of people in Scotland.

A very interesting article on the UK's "independent" deterrent by Charlie Stross can be found at:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

In the US, we are actually aware of the Scots ambition to secede. Insert Braveheart reference here. Many of us were actually Scotsman or Irishman at some point in our ancestry.

We are anticipating what will happen if "yes" succeeds and what that means to Scotland (and its economy). World leaders do not want successfully countries with desirable/friendly leaders to break up.

You have no idea how difficult it is to avoid thinking of it in historical terms - although my own views (I'm voting Yes) are all about the future, not the past.

My music teacher at secondary school (a staunch SNP supporter) spent a significant amount of time teaching us songs about a war 700 years ago (NB guess why the referendum is in 2014?).

Personally, I would forget the Declaration of Arbroath, no matter how stirring it may be, and focus on the Declaration of Calton Hill which is all about a better future:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Calton_Hill

[Ignore its origins with the SSP - entertaining bunch of lunatics though they are].

"We are anticipating what will happen if "yes" succeeds and what that means to Scotland"

In the long run, about as much as Ireland. This is not the first piece of land the British Empire has lost. Not uncharted territory at all.

You know most of the "Scottish" legends are made up out of whole cloth and make the most unrealistic cowboy films look like saving private Rayan in terms of realism.

You're telling me Braveheart wasnt a true story?

Either way most people in the US know about some of them. Thats why I chose to say: "Insert Braveheart reference here" instead of "It's all for nothing if you don't have freedom."

Actually the line you are probably looking for (and why they kept going on and on about "freedom" in that movie) is:

...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Arbroath

Which, as an aside, has some quite interesting stuff about sacking a King if he isn't good at his job...

[NB This has no real relevance to the current referendum - but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to liking this kind of stuff.]

I don't think most people would consider the UK a "relatively minor economic and military power". It's a G7 country, after all.

The UK is a relatively minor economic power? I mean, yes, it's far from top dog, but it's the sixth largest economy in the world (by GDP). It's not as though the only countries worth paying attention to are the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, and France (which is neck and neck with the UK), is it?

I think that line was me being grumpy about the referendum coverage - I've got to the point where I just want to cast my vote, get it over with and move on.

[NB Doesn't matter what a bank economist or business leader says, they aren't going to change my vote.]

google for UK vs mississippi and the like. Basically you take GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity per citizen and Britain as a whole is poorer than Alabama but slightly richer than Mississippi. Regardless of the decimal places the headlines are all along the lines of if Britain joined the USA as a 51st state it would be roughly the 49th or 50th poorest depending on who's numbers you use.

It was a huge fad across all the infotainment sites about three or four weeks ago.

these figures are deceptive considering the UK's comparatively-socialist tax attitude. The biggest thing I would point out is that we have nationalised free healthcare for everyone, which takes a big bite out of PPP but also means that being poor isn't a health concern. We also have a pretty comprehensive benefits system which, although unpopular, provides a large safety net for the unemployed, disabled and otherwise non-working.

The UK isn't some pauper state where everyone's living on the breadline, we just take a different approach to the USA.

[edit] replaced GDP with PPP for better clarity/relevance.

Also we have more holidays, Americans get next to nothing.

That's per capita and has rather little to do with the overall size of the UK's economy. The US is very rich and even its poorest states are doing pretty well.

The UK's GDP is substantially bigger than that of any state of the US. (UK: about $2.5T; California: about $1.9T.)

True. The bad news is the article specified Britain not the UK as a whole and the population of Britain is twice CA.

The innumerable articles on the topic seem to miss the point that its not necessarily a poverty thing as a quality of living thing.

Poverty in the USA means poor health and very high crime and awful living conditions. And there's a cultural correlation with trash blowing around in the streets and run down buildings. I've spent some time in Ireland (I don't like on the US coasts so I can afford international travel) and poverty in Ireland merely means they can't afford luxuries. I never really found a slum in my wanderings of Galway and Dublin but all US cities have slums.

I have also spent time in Huntsville Alabama, mostly in the neighboring military base, decades ago. I can hear the coasties snickering already, but its really quite nice other than the humidity. So Britain being as poor as the deep south really isn't all that bad.

I've linked to an article from a reputable source on the matter below. However, I would say that having lived in Bay Area, France and the UK, despite the fact that the headline figures place France and the UK below California, France and the UK feel wealthier than those numbers would suggest. I suspect the difference lies in better public amenities and provisions in Europe.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Voices/2014/...

I searched for this - because, not very surprisingly, this didn't really make the news in the UK - and found the following: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/08/26/if...

It's actually quite an interesting thought exercise to contrive as many reasons as you can why the information presented there is pretty much meaningless.

There are allegations (admittedly partisan) that the British government's Foreign Office (which answers to the governing coalition, who are strongly opposed to Scottish independence) have been campaigning for the past year to get foreign heads of state and institutions to make statements opposing Scottish independence:

http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2014/mar/westminster-ad...

If true, this would certainly explain why people with no conceivable direct interest in the constitutional settlement of the British Isles (Vladimir Putin, anyone? Tony Abbot?) have been speaking out strongly against the independence campaign: it costs nothing and keeps the British ambassador's boss happy.

Apres vous, le deluge.

I favor the No campaign because I favor federalism, in general - though as someone who grew up in Ireland, I can also empathize with the desire for a separate national identity. Overall, though, the practical freedom of being able to cross borders without having to account for one's movements or accept inequitable monetary transactions is a far more valuable liberty than nominal participation in some abstract sovereignty. I have my doubts about whether Irish independence from the UK was really advantageous and feel that my European citizenship - nebulous though European political identity may be - is of far greater value than my Irish citizenship.

As far as Scotland in particular is concerned, I think independence is a very mixed blessing - whether or not I'm right about the long-term value in the short term I would anticipate a period of vicious factional politicking.

Its a step closer to democracy, where your voting power is not diluted ten times.

Why not make every street into its own republic? Because more voting power within a less powerful entity isn't necessarily an overall improvement. I'm unconvinced that sovereignty is infinitely divisible or effectively fungible (and I promise you that this is not for lack of exploring radically different concepts).

>Why not make every street into its own republic?

I didn't say we shouldn't. I think that is ultimately the direction we should be aiming towards. True democracy, where the people decide.

Small nations would join forces in larger unions. That is, when it's advantageous for two nations to be part of a union, but neither wants to truly merge with the other, you get things like the EU. A deeper hierarchy, i.e. small governments which are themselves working as part of a larger government might lead to better local policies than what we have now.

The two smaller nations created from the UK after a yes vote would already be co-members of a variety of overlapping organisations/unions/treaties, such as Nato, the commonwealth, various EU-related things.

Independence, Independence with a currency union, further devolution, the current status quo and what it was like a decade ago are all points on a spectrum rather than a black and white thing.

They wouldn't though. The UK (or what remains of it) would be a member of those organisations. Scotland would be a member of almost none of them.

There is certainly a spectrum of different levels of devolution, but make no mistake: there is a massive chasm at the point of actual independence. It changes everything.

If what you say is true, then it would be monumentally self-defeating behavior from all involved. I can see why game theory might suggest various threats might make sense at this point, before the vote, but after the vote has taken place, it would no longer in be in the UK's simple economic interest to maintain that stance.

Although Scotland would at least have the choice as to whether to apply to join or not. Choices it does not have at present. If Scotland remains part of the UK and a future Westminster government (which Scotland would be unlikely to affect at the ballot box) initiates an in/out EU referendum how much do you think Scotland's opinion would be worth?

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