We have been trying unsuccessfully to recruit more participants to the Beaglesonian Institute for years, so this is certainly not an intrusion. Welcome aboard Old Dog! It seems that the comment section is a little hard to follow on this site so, if Old Dog continues to participate, we might consider making him a co-author so he can post regular blogs like we do.
Free trade is certainly on the Libertarian agenda, but global government is not, and the EU seems to be a little of both. Well, not exactly global government, more like the kind of national government our Founding Fathers founded when they persuaded 13 sovereign states to unify into a federal system. I don't know what they would think if they could see how their project has evolved into what we have today. The EU seems to have improved on our model in that they have provided a way for member states to secede without fighting a civil war. On the other hand, their secession process has not been tested until now, and it's pretty complicated, so it remains to be seen if it will work better than our Civil War did.
Last I heard, the Libertarians believed that anybody should be able to secede from anybody else. States should be able to secede from the union, counties should be able to secede from states, townships should be able to secede from counties, and individuals should be able to secede from townships. While I kind of agree with that on general principles, I'm not sure how it would work out in real life if it were ever to be implemented, which is not likely to happen anyway. A better system would be the plan I have advanced a couple of times on the internet. Instead of secession, we should have expulsion, we get to kick out the people we don't like and still remain the United States of America. We could start with California because they are going to break off and sink into the sea anyway. With the other states it's more complicated because we don't need to get rid of any whole state, just some of the big cities. Maybe each state should expel their own problem cities. Many of them are ungovernable and nobody goes there anymore anyway. We could have kick outs instead of bail outs, and use the money we save to build a wall around each city. You know, that might work for Europe too. Instead of the good countries seceding from the EU, they could just kick all the problem countries out.
I wish I could claim credit for this idea, but it originated with the legendary Czech philosopher Jara Cimrman a good hundred years ago. He called his plan "The Fragmentation of Europe." Cimrman believed that the problem with Europe was that many of the countries were too big and were always trying to get bigger at their neighbors' expense. He said that, if all those countries were reduced to the size of his native Bohemia, they would be too weak to pick on each other and Europe would be at peace. Of course nobody listened to him, and look what happened: two world wars, a cold war, and now this Brexit thing.
Immigration is a whole nother topic. It's too late for me to get into it tonight, maybe tomorrow.
Thank you for the warm welcome. It is an honor to be considered for inclusion in such august company.
ReplyDeleteGlobal government is a terrible idea simply because it would be impossible to implement without a heavy oppressive hand. Competent global management might not be bad but would be very difficult unless the right people start communicating. Good luck with that.
Seems to me that talks of any kind of secession are driven by fear, not a good motivator. But it's good that it is being talked about because it brings to light many of the problems with the current way things are done, government-wise.
Much to ponder.