- cross-posted to:
- california@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- california@lemmy.world
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It’s nice to think about taking your ball and going home. However, if we denigrate Texas everytime they threaten to secede we really shouldn’t be giving California a pass.
Edit- fix fat finger spelling
I don’t denigrate Texas every time they say they’re gonna secede. In fact, I want them to. If they don’t want to be a part of America, then let them go do their own thing. If that turns out to be a bad move for them, then that’s on them.
It’s a moot point anyway, though, because the ruling post-Civil war (Texas v. White, specifically) determined that unilateral secession was not allowed. In order for California to leave they would either have to come to an agreement with the Federal government to do so (or a majority of all other state legislatures, or something… there’s no precedent) or fight a war against the rest of the union and win, forcing capitulation and a concession.
Both possibilities seem extremely remote.
This is only posturing, and even if it passes it is not designed to result in California actually leaving the union.
Can we coordinate with Oregon and Washington to join Canada?
That aside, California leads the US in many ways, but we have a tendency to go too far and do really dumb things. We’re pretty good at self congratulations even when other states stare, slack-jawed at our blunders. It’s nice to have perspective.
CASCADIA NOW!!!
i freaking love the idea of Cascadia becoming autonomous and independent. I’d love it if New England did that too.
It’s an interesting idea, but it can’t possibly happen. The federal government has too much military infrastructure in different parts of the US, especially nuclear material. They’d never let anyone secede with it.
We also have the top two ports in the US. And if we took the PNW with us nearly all trade from Asia would pass through this theoretical new country before reaching the US.
Edit; also there’s a lot of division between the urban and rural areas of all west coast states. It’s fun to think about, but I don’t see it happening without a major conflict
Can we get hawaii too for our corrupt politician’s vacation homes
Honestly at this point I feel the US would do great by splitting and becoming a confederation (think EU styles autonomy).
I think the differences are just too big to have a functioning state.
I also understand that the push towards these movements is often done by Russian propaganda, who want to do anything to split up the US and NATO.
I live in the EU, there are some good things but also ineffeciencies living in a confederation style government. To be fair, while consumer and labour protection in the EU has been amazing, we have to admit that there is almost no innovation in R&D going on in Europe as a whole compared to the US. Aside from strict regulations, this is because there is no single rule on how to promote R&D. Each countries have their own rules and promotions. Some states are innovators like Germany, or has no R&D at all like Ireland.
Another weakness that the EU has is on production and defense. As you rightly pointed out, Russia wants the West to fragment, and Russia wants the EU to remain chaotic when it comes to military production and have a disunited, if not an incoherent, European army. But external influence is not even the main issue, the main issue is that many EU countries are neutral like Ireland and Austria, who are not part of NATO. I don’t know about Austria but it’s very unpopular here in Ireland to join any military alliance and there is a negative image of NATO after the Iraq War. Finland and Sweden used to be anti-NATO until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And with the legacy of the horrors of the Second World War, military production in Europe has been weak. Even though the EU has outstripped the US in terms of giving aid to Ukraine, much of these are non-military because European arms industries are struggling to produce. The US is still the primary military donor of Ukraine.
With different competing values and priorities, it’s challenging for the EU to remain confederate. A lot of people advocate for the EU to federalise for this reason.
confederation
… odd choice for a term … Nobody in the EU would define themselves by it …
Well, trying to use terms to justify the US confederacy post-Civil War aside, it would actually be better for a lot of states. The rest of the world can no longer trust and increasingly bipolar schizophrenic US, whereas that’s not the case for a certain number of states. You can’t overcome the deeply flawed and corrupt two party federal system, and it’s rapidly becoming even worse. If you can’t fix the problems from within, you will only be able to fix them from outside.
But… it is a confederation. Is it not? Why wouldn’t they? Even Wikipedia mentions confederation in the first paragraph of the EU entry:
The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity combining the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation.
Sorry California, you will have to negotiate with Colorado and Arizona for your water. So basically you have to take us with you.
The negotiating:
If you don’t give us water we wont send you the good you need to live
You’ll die well before us in that waiting game, baby
Aren’t a lot of crops grown in Mexico and imported through the Arizona channels? Because produce is way cheaper in Arizona than California.
They got desalination plants.
They cost $1m/min to run
$1,000 to $3,000 per acre-foot of water produced, which can translate to about $2,000 to $3,500 per acre-foot for smaller-scale projects .
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1 acre-foot of water = 325,851 gallons
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At $2,000 per acre-foot, the cost per gallon is about $0.0061 per gallon. Its really a range between $0.005 to $0.01 per gallon.
Of course you can just move to a state that has water. Everyone knows you can just drink river water and lake water without any treatment at all. Plus the convenience of living near a swamp, river, lake or flood plane is superb. Otherwise you would need to carry the water somewhere else than where it is. But sure, you’re right, we shouldn’t desalinate water. That’s crazy!
Oooh oooh, now do one for the AI GPU farms. Now, a lot of people would argue these are not a comparable use of vital resources, what with water being critical for the survival of all life, and AI the current billionaire snake oil.
But I mean, what’s really more important than generating capital to grow the net worth of a few people by a few percents so that we can input text to generate pictures of a sick-ass panther or stories that lose the plot less than three sentences in?
A single ChatGPT query requires 500ml of water, or let’s say one water bottle. Meanwhile, a single cheeseburger requires 700 gallons of water or 5299 bottles.
The whole “AI is wasting all the water” argument is not as significant as it seems when you compare it to literally anything else we as humans do.
Electricity consumption, on the other hand…
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the amount of power desalination uses. Didn’t even know AI consumes water.
edit: wait a minute–why the fuck does AI consume water???
Second edit: sorry, I got caught up in the original comment talking about the cost per minute for desalination, and immediately went to assuming they were talking about energy costs.
Ah, my bad, lol. Im dumb. I was stuck on water consumption ig. I shouldnt wake up and Lemmy…
Acre-foot? Fuck me that is a cursed unit. Americans really will use anything other than the metric system
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I know Cali won’t HAVE to, but can they join Canada?
If California could actually pull it off, sure. They’re the largest economy in the United States, and a larger economy than many whole nations. Would any sane country turn that down?
I know that a Canadian lawmaker offered to take Washington, Oregon and California as new provinces in response to Trump: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/canadian-lawmaker-offers-take-washington-oregon-california-new-provinces/LPFT7I4AYBGCLHBKVOB2TIFQOQ/
Remember how the federal government treated the south when they tried to secede. And people still celebrate it, not without good reason. But they didn’t just go to war to stop it, they burned the south to the ground.
Well, there are two big differences.
The ethical one, the South wanted to secede to keep their slaves, and to clarify because the term slavery has been run ragged by propaganda, they wanted to keep their forced labour/death camps where they could kill, maim, rape, buy and sell people, also children, and have them do backbreaking, crippling work to enrich themselves.
On the other hand, California is contemplating this because the South, after losing their war, did a 200 year psyop to get a rapist and a bona-fide sieg heiling Nazi in power to force California to drop initiatives that would keep the Earth inhabitable and let their citizens live in peace.
The pragmatic one is that while the South was what it was, California is still an economic powerhouse accounting for 20% of the US economy. If they would secede, and bring a few like-minded states with them, it’s not the least bit implausible that the South would be doing the burning again.
All that said, the Russians and the Chinese are salivating at this idea I’m sure.
But they didn’t just go to war to stop it, they burned the south to the ground.
Do that to CA and you’re shooting yourself in the foot as the US
Destroying your most important ports and where more than 50% of your agriculture nationwide comes from is not a good idea
Which is exactly why they would burn it to the ground. The federal government would never let California, let alone any state, secede peacfully. They can’t risk losing those resources and would destroy them before allowing them to be competition.
CA is already burning due to mismanagement. So…
TIL wind=mismanagement
Climate change = mismanagement on the part of pretty much the whole world. So technically correct.
Question: what things were done in the 80’s to prep for wildfires? Do they do any of those things today?
So you don’t actually know what you’re talking about and yet you commented anyway?
I was alive in the 80s, I definitely know what I’m talking about. If you can’t answer the question though, then you obviously do not.
Removed by mod
Fuck off you empty headed dumb fucking sea lion sack of shit.
No.
please call it the “New California Republic”
As long as it doesn’t end up like Shady Sands.
CA better get their hands on some ICBMs. Keep one pointed at DC, and another pointed at Mar-a-Lago. It’s pretty much the only way a state can keep its sovereignty.
For all of the reasons given, secession from the United States is a bad idea. But I’m going to keep banging this drum: The metropolises need to secede from their states, while staying part of the United States. Heck, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 40 of the states. It’s about time that they got fair representation.
This is stupid and a pointless gesture. Do something more productive with your time.
Something that might work out better and would be a lot easier to do (thought still not very easy), would be to split into 3 (or 4?) states.
California has almost 12% of the US population concentrated in that one state! By far most of the states contain about 2% or less of the US population each.
By splitting, the population would be better represented in the Senate with 6 senators between them instead of only 2, and there might be a net gain in some other benefits that are given on the state level.
edit: I see that someone had already brought this idea up, but IMO it’s a good idea that they should seriously consider!
The right wing has wanted this for years because California is very conservative outside of its cities. Splitting the state up would guarantee a Republican Senate.
Careful. Texas has some long forgotten provision where they could easily do the same thing, into 5 states. and they’d all be red.
If they split California into 3, the northern state might be red (or swing) but the other two would definitely be blue because of SR and LA. Look at a map of election results by county.
With Texas, at least a couple of them would have to be blue because some would contain the blue urban areas. Same with FL, at least one new state would be blue. if CA, TX, and FL all did it. If they divided into 5 states it might even out. Of course there would have to be negotiations to get enough people and the parties to agree to the boundaries, which should prevent too much of an advantage to one side or the other, especially if people don’t want their cities be split between two states.
But regardless of the results for the Senate, the point is that the people in most populous states of this country are not getting their fair representation in our federal government and that needs to change.
Then of course as long as we’re altering our makeup of states, we have to give the citizens DC representation and make that a state. And Puerto Rico should be able to decide if it wants to become a state as well.
German here, so excuse my ignorance, but wouldn’t it be easier to change the voting system to one that counts each vote as equal on a state level and get rid of the voting people stuff? Last time I checked you’re no longer riding horses to Washington…
but wouldn’t it be easier to change the voting system to one that counts each vote as equal on a state level and get rid of the voting people stuff
Country wide that requires a constitutional amendment, which requires 2/3 of all states to agree. It’s been tried, the cuckservatives rage and bitch like the children they are because it would mean they’d never win again, so it never goes through
There’s an effort to make it so that individual states will ignore the EC called NAPOVOINTERCO that would basically force the US to use a popular vote system, but it’s not got enough individual states signed on yet to activate itself
When it comes to the US, this is a simple rule to follow: federal change is nearly impossible because of the babies in the GOP, while states are easier but can change a whole lot less overall
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Brexit was clever wordplay, every proposal since hasn’t been. Fuckin “Calexit”, do better.
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Yeah, you don’t get to just leave a country. Believe it or not, there was actually at least one war about that!
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Fuck CBS for their cancer ass website.
Exit = vacate… Vacation…
Californication?
Californexit
Caleaveornia
Californiout
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Yes, please. As a Californian who is already looking to move abroad, it would be a dream come true for my state to do it for me.
It will be the death of many reasonable people in red states though.
My heart goes out to the rational minority in the red states. My advice to them is to leave while they can, however they can. This very well could be a matter of life and death.
Your heart goes out to us, how sweet, I’ll think of your heart when me and my friends who cannot leave are rounded up and sent to camps.
Look, I’ve got no dog in this fight, but in my opinion, something you need to make peace with is that the people in blue states have to watch out for themselves too, before the rot spreads too far and they find the modern day Gestapo on their own streets, killing their own people.
And if/when they do split, try to understand them, and blame the fascists, not those trying to escape from fascism.
Either way, if your life is threatened by fascists, I hope you’ll survive and make it out. If you don’t, I hope you’ll put up a good fight, but that’s up to you to decide, not me. I wish the best to all of you and hope that here in Europe we won’t decide to follow through on the whole right-wing swing of the pendulum.
Okay, but then California becomes a smaller country bordering a much larger fascist neighbor with the largest military in the world.
In what world is that a good outcome?
They’d become a pretty large country with one of the world’s largest economies holding major port access to their neighbor. A few allies and things aren’t quite so clear cut. Not to mention they’d potentially have significant military resources.
That economy is tightly integrated with the rest of the country.
In a secession, those ties would be severed, likely tanking the economy of both California and the US.
