When you hear the word secession, you probably think of one of two things. Either the civil war, or California trying to leave after Trump’s election in 2016. Regardless of which instance you think of, its pretty clear that this usually isn’t thought of in a positive light. This is why I enjoyed this speakers take on secession. Rather than paint it as a harmful thing that needs to be avoided, he explained it as an innate right and a way to increase the success of the country that is splitting. My two take aways were that the right of self determination is something that should be upheld as a human right, and that by letting groups secede, the world can actually become more prosperous.
One of the topics from this seminar that caught me off guard was when he discussed that unless a minority can have a much higher birthrate than the majority, they will always be suppressed. Even in a well designed constitutional democracy, the majority will always find a way to exert their will. Unless you give veto power to the majority, then even appointed positions like judges or courts will bend to the will of the majority. So unless they plan on becoming the majority by importing or creating more people, then they are forced to be under some form of oppression. To some degree this isn’t inherently bad. The government should strive to serve the majority of people’s interests. However this becomes an issue when you dont have the ability to leave. When you dont have the so called right of self determination, then you are stuck in an oppressive system for forever. This is escalated when there aren’t other places you are able to leave to because of cultural or linguistic differences. He gave the example of leaving to Mexico or Canada if you were unhappy with America. Not only would this be hard, but likely prohibitive because of the distance and differences. Therefore, people must have the right to break off into their own groups if the majority in that area votes to do so. This doesn’t have to be just a preexisting state or city, but can be any size or group of people that wants to exercise their self determination.
The second thing that I thought was of note was his conversation of what would happen to the remaining pieces, and what the benefits would be. He addressed several concerns such as nukes, war, and GDP. He illustrated the benefits of many smaller nations in the example of Europe around the year 1000. By having so many smaller states, they were able to have free market competition and therefore more development. By letting people break off, they are able to compete and in turn become more productive. This productivity is seen in the baltic countries post soviet rule. In fact, this fact also rebuts some of the other concerns that some foreign power would come invade, or that there would be infighting. If these countries have higher GDP per capita that are actually more militarily resilient. If there was ever the threat of invasion, they would likely make defense pacts to fight as a larger unit and still be able to defend themselves. Overall it seems that history shows that when you are able to let the free market principles play out in the places where people live, they are able to become more productive and successful.
*Overall this was certainly an interesting topic. I would be skeptical to anyone who says that the west coast will leave immediately, or even after Trumps’ election. I think although there is much spoken support for this idea in the realms of twitter, when it comes to actually leaving it would be a different story. I believe that although it may make many radical people happier, overall it would be a very complex and difficult situation to manage. I also think that the rest of the mainland US would be unhappy with losing a significant portion of tax revenue or access to the ports on the west cost. Although it may be better from a freedom of self determination perspective, overall many would be very unhappy. Basically although many people many disagree with the political views of the west coast, they would ultimately not want them to take many of the prosperous parts of the US away as a separate country. At the end of the day, I believe that yes, people should have the right to leave as a minority to escape inevitable oppression, however when it comes to the real world, I think it often runs into many logistic road blocks and opposition. *