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I actually think generation later trend would be more towards uniting rather than splitting. Splitting rarely benefits population as a whole. Sometime a portion of population might benefit but overall it's loss.

General evolutionary trends for human kind had been towards uniting. We started out as small tribes then evolving to city-size kingdoms and now to huge unions like China, Canada and USA. Big countries do well simply because there far far more resources at their disposal, they are more resilient to disasters and overall utilization of resources is much more balanced. Small countries have little chance of ever matching growth and momentum of large countries. Sure, Norway and Finland can be relatively "well off" by exploiting their natural resources but they simply aren't going to be country who goes to Mars or invents next big things. By law of numbers, number of engineers and scientists in small country will always be small and thus their ability to take on big projects always limited.

This is very over generalized and a bit too simplistic of an analysis (no offense). There are certainly trends across history towards larger social organization, but this isn't necessarily always mutuy exclusive to smaller, more local organization. There are both natural and political reasons for this. The human animal, like any social animal, is biologically equipped to form social networks with only a limited quantity of individuals; non-scale free network effects come into play. Neither is larger social organization desirable from a democratic point of view, as the voice of the individual becomes increasingly diluted and far removed from the center of mass.

This trend towards increasing unification you point out is also a mixed bag. Large unitarian states have tended to be rather aggressivly expansionist empires throughout history. There is a critical balance to be struck between local autonomy and global integration, and this is where notions of Federalism tend to arise.

Many of today's territorial definitions are accidents of history with little regard for self-determination, yet locked into the Westphalian status quo. A global evolution towards higher economic integration, democratic peace, and frankly the nuclear preclusion of conventional warfare between developed nations, all conspire to form a new international security environment in which minor local territorial rearrangements no longer threaten profound effects on the chess boards of great powers. It then becomes possible to peacefully renegotiate some of this status quo.

I expect that this isn't the last we've heard from scotland, and that the future of globalization with witness an increase in both unification towards an integrated whole as well as greater subdivision and recombination within and among local spheres.

Another lesson from biology: it wasn't the continued absorption of all genetic material into increasing enlargement of single cellular life that brought us to where we are today, but rather the clever federalism of diversified multicellular life that sparked a revolution.

In this case breaking up the UK could be a first step towards consolidation within the EU.

My immediate hope is that everyone who has got off their butt to participate in the yes and no campaigns can stay off their butt and volunteer in other ways to help Scotland. Huge numbers of people could make real permanent positive change possible without the cost of new government institutions.

big society :/

As a parent, the idea of repeatedly asking the same question to get consent is familiar to me, and I can confirm it often does work ;-)

I read in The Economist that the No vote was bolstered by Scottish pensioners who fear for their retirement funds.

It's inevitable that the referendum will occur again (probably under a Tory majority government) and with those said pensioners not around; you'll get the result you wanted.

Er, I know life expectancy in Scotland isn't great but you realise the dead pensioners will be replaced by new ones, right?

Won't you just have other pensioners then?

I read something along those lines somewhere else as well saying in 10/20 years all the old folks will be gone and they yes will win, but hasn't history shown us that idealistic young just turn to realistic oldies with time?

By then there will be new people of pension age, but they won't have actual pensions.

Pensioners are not a finite resource.

Pensioners with considerable state pensions are unfortunately a dying breed.

Check your facts, the result in '79 was a Yes.

Technically you are correct - but that referendum had some odd requirements (it wasn't a simple majority vote) so devolution didn't happen:

"The referendum resulted in a 51.6% support for the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, this represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate, short of the required 40%. The Act was therefore repealed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum,...

For comparison, yesterday's turnout was 84.59%.

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

Checked the facts.

"The referendum resulted in a 51.6% support for the proposal, but with a turnout of 64%, this represented only 32.9% of the registered electorate, short of the required 40%. The Act was therefore repealed."

This I knew but I'd never heard that...

"the SNP carried out a survey of the electoral register in the Edinburgh Central constituency. This appeared to show that the register was so out of date that even in an area where major support for a 'yes' vote might be expected, achievement of 40% of the electorate was virtually unattainable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_devolution_referendum...

I suspect that now that independence has been introduced as something to be seriously considered that in a generation or so it might also look more sensible than it did at first.

So the plan is to ask again and again and again until yes wins, isn't it?

To be honest, that doesn't seem fair.

Are you saying it would be fair for one generation's majority political opinion to irrevocably tie the hands of all later generations?

There is a subtle difference between "all later generations" and once in a generation. What if every land did this? It would not scale to be permanently debating this kind of thing.

A few months of debate every 20 years is hardly something that is difficult to deal with. Somehow the UK manages to deal with substantially more complex elections much more often than that.

And you'll note that there was good reason for this: Scotland has gone from barely supporting devolution to getting it, to substantial increases in votes for a party whose goal is independence, to 45% voting for full independence, in a matter of 25 years.

It's then a fairly good chance that the views on independence may change substantially over the next 20-25 years too. In either direction.

Are you saying once in a generation is too often? Because the comment you initially replied to implied that there might be another referendum in the next couple of generations. Exactly how many generations do you think need to pass? And why should even one later generation be bound by the previous generation?

I don't know what you mean by "it would not scale". How would it not scale? Every ~2-6 years, voters in many countries around the world are invited to peacefully overthrow their governments. The debates surrounding those votes commonly become existential, and debates about independence for some regions are common, if not constant.

It sounds like you're saying you don't want to have the debate. But it's simply not up to you. If lots of other people want to have it (say, 45% of the electorate, in this case), what gives you the right to say "it's not fair"?

When did it become unfair to have debates and votes?

How would it not scale? Every ~2-6 years, voters in many countries around the world are invited to peacefully overthrow their governments.

That's disingenous. That works because there are precise game rules that allows it to happen. Changing the rules and the play field so often is a different story.

When did it become unfair to have debates and votes?

When they finally succeed, there won't be a chance to come back.

> Changing the rules

Changing what rules, exactly? Does this mean you'd be happy if Westminster just passed legislation saying every 10 years there would be a referendum under the same terms?

> When they finally succeed, there won't be a chance to come back.

Who is this grand overseer of the world that gets to decide two democratic countries are not allowed to decide to unite?

Why not? The threat of repeated referendums is the only way to ensure that UK will actually implement all the promises it's given Scotland in the past week.

Why not have one every summer? It's very entertaining and does wonders for tourism.

Means, ends...

By that argument, why do we bother having elections all the time, when we could just have one and be done with it forever?

Does that seem fair?