That was the idea; 50 countries, or states, working together as one. Hence the name: the United States
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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not 50 seperate ones...but we should definitely let some of these states experience first-hand what not participating/benefiting from this union actually looks like.
let texas leave the union, and all their seats in congress with it...see how quickly they come crawling back to the table
lol no. It might be better off for the world if the US was balkanized but absolutely not for the US. Size and diversity is not the source of the US's problems. In fact, the EU would be better off it was more unified if it could manage it.
People in the U.S.A. forget that "state" means a sovereign nation. Why are the "United States" not actually states? Taxes. Actually thats basically it. After what would be known as U.S.A. was founded, taxes where opt in. but the burgeoning central government was on the hook for all its international debts. and of course no state wanted to pay taxes...or did pay taxes. So they restructured and the "federal" goverment became superior to all states and its power has grown while states rights diminished. So yeah, in some ways wed be alot better if states where thier own sovereignty, and the founding fathers even put a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union can leave, but the last states to do that got the **** beat out of them and it was made illegal (CSA / Civil war).
TLDR; Founding states didn't want to pay taxes, federal government was formed to collect taxes.
the founding fathers even put a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union can leave, but the last states to do that got the **** beat out of them and it was made illegal (CSA / Civil war).
The CSA didn't get their asses kicked for leaving the Union. The CSA got their asses kicked for starting the hot war by attacking Fort Sumter 2 months after seceded. The CSA also doubled-down on keeping slavery legal in their Constitution which burned any bridges for support from Europe which had already abolished slavery long before.
FYI, I didn't downvote you.
yeah. It wasn't clear in my comment but I wasn't trying to say they where put down just for seceding (Though to Lincoln it was a way more important thing than slavery) but that they are the most notable case of states leaving the union and they got beat the shit out of, two separate things.
Many yokels don't understand that the "wAr oF nOrThErN aGgReSsIoN" was literally started by the south
and the founding fathers even put a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union can leave
What are you referring to?
I don't know, and I even briefly tried looking it up.
while no explicit mention of secession, the very act of the revolution and statements such as "...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…" and "...When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."have been used to show the idea the founding fathers supported secession.
Only a handful of times has anyone in the U.S.A. seceded, though most of the times it was just to create a new states in the U.S.A. It was officially outlawed after the C.S.A. seceded and not much of any serious attempt has been made since.
while no explicit mention of secession, the very act of the revolution and statements such as “…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” and "…When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…"have been used to show the idea the founding fathers supported secession.
Neither of those are in the US Constitution. Those are from the Declaration of Independence.
That's a far cry from a stipulation that any state unhappy with the union could leave. While the Declaration of Independence is an important founding document of our country, it does not have the force of law.
I would argue secession as it was imagined by the rebel states was implicitly unconstitutional already. That was certainly the position of the Union during the Civil War. You can't guarantee individual rights of U.S. citizens in the Constitution and allow states to free themselves from the obligation to respect those rights by just choosing to secede.
We do have the ability to dissolve the union as envisioned by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence, but it can't be done unilaterally by any one state. We could do it with a constitutional amendment.
The only other way is through blood and death. As you point out, that hasn't worked so far.
The more I think about things, and how well stuff works in other countries, i believe it’s due to the sheer size and demographic makeup of the country.
I think it is rather because they were all outlaws and outcasts in their beginning, and then some day they made money, and that was all they had dreamed about, and so they simply never changed. If you divide the so-called states now into sovereign areas, they would immediately start fights everywhere.
You would have your next civil war faster than you can say "Putin".
first get russia to turn into 46 oblasts.
I'll wait.
I'll never get the obsession with "Country should be Lots of Countries", as though balkinization has ever improved the politics or the stability of a region. The Ottoman Empire was a shit region run by shit people, and yet its dissolution only seems to have immiserated the next four generations.
What on earth does anyone think an independent Florida or Volgograd does to improve the current situation? FFS, the issue of nuclear proliferation alone...
I’m fairly certain this was the original goal when the country was founded and the idea of states rights, but at some it feels like things got flipped on their heads.
Amongst other things: a Civil War.
It wouldn’t last. Think of the Futurama quote about Friends: “Why does Ross, the largest friend, not just eat the others?”. Ignoring what we would have to do with all the nuclear weapons and federal waste, the neighboring states would simply expand to consume their lesser brethren. Cascadia might arise from California, Oregon, and Washington — but the damage that the Second United States This Time Keeping Slavery would do to the surrounding area would be untold. Not worth it IMO.
Cascadia might arise from California, Oregon, and Washington
And go on to cannibalize the "independent" states of the mountain west. Like, Utah isn't operating as an independent territory. They don't even have enough water rights to exist as they stand.
They might, or they might let it die on the vine along with Idaho and Montana and Nevada. Also, water “rights” probably won’t matter much in the case of a dissolution like this.
There are lots of things that have been accomplished in the USA that would not have been if each of the 50 states operated as separation nations. Besides the obvious of the scientific and medical advancements, the common rules for business across states allows for products and many services to flow mostly uninhibited by each states rules (some exceptions apply).
Having enough resources as a single nation allowed for a common defense which saved the USA a number of times. Apparently this is also one of the reasons some regions of the world fell to colonialism because the various groups that occupied the land were not unified in their goals or defense. It allowed stronger powers to pick of each smaller group separately until the region as a whole was conquered.
I often times wonder if it would be better managed with more of an EU style system where certain standards are core across all states and then leave each country to truly govern themselves.
I like Europe a lot, but they've got some problems directly stemming from the lack of a single nation encompassing all of them. Even to-date there is not a single monetary policy in the EU. This lead to things like the GREXIT crisis. The leadership in Brussels can also get stymied by a single contrarian member halting progress such as Hungary frequently stopping aid to Ukraine.
None of this is to say the USA is perfect or the EU is flawed. There are positives and negatives to both systems. No one has found a perfect system yet.
I think it’s very likely we Balkanize soon. The majority of us don’t want to live in a christofacist technofeudal system run by a deranged game show host, Israel and South African apartheid Nazi’ scum survailling us with robo Nazi AI
Maybe not 50, but yes many have considered the US should be broken up, same with China etc ... India was already broken up (in a terrible way) but it's now up with China.