Ignoring the massive cost, legal hurdles, and the opinion of the residents/government/outside powers, if you could magically grant independence to certain territories or form new bigger nations from existing ones with no repercussions to yourself, what new countries would you create?
Please treat this as a non-serious post, let’s not get into a massive political debate, those never end well.
Delete all states and borders
Lots of fun stupid ideas here…
- Everyone in the world is now their own microstate with their current position as the start point for a voronoi style distribution of territory.
- Canada and Canadia are now legally distinct, coterritorial nations. Anyone who refers to themselves as Canadian has the effect of renouncing their citizenship to Canada and joining Canadia. Anyone who refers to themselves as Canadan does the opposite.
- The world is now divided into nations by elevation rather than latitude and longitude.
- All locations are redistributed by their affixes. All -stans are one nation. All -villes are another. All -tons and -towns another. All San- and Santa- are another. And so on, and so on. Any conflicts based on having multiple affixes are decided by a fight to the death between randomly chosen locals who prefer one or the other.
- All areas are formed into nations based on the most common seasoning in that region.
I’d break them all up into a grid of like…100 miles, squared. Those are the new country boundaries, the rest is up to the people within the boundaries to decide. There are now a shitload of countries. Good luck, everybody.
The only right answer:
Scandinavia. Not sure if Finland geographically counts as part of Scandinavia, but they can join too if the want to. Same goes for Iceland and Faroe Island.
Just need to figure out a mechanism that prevents the Danes and Swedes from steamrolling the politics this time around.
Ever been to Greece? 'Cause we’re going back to city states, baby!
United Ireland
Free Ireland!
I hope to see this in my lifetime
We already missed the deadline for this to be the Star Trek timeline.
Can Ireland have both… All the Islands?
California breaks off to hang out with Hawaii. Alaska can come too.
One world under my benevolent iron fist, ruled from my volcano base.
Dr. Doom?
Doctor Evil, actually.
How about the concept of a nation itself ceases to exist? How about free movement of people, very weak states, consumer cooperatives as the only capital controlling entities who are allowed to buy labor only from worker coops? Economic democracy, competition, choice and so on?
How about a world without kings and non consented rulers, a world where we stop wanting to conquer each other, and instead focus on conquering the limits set on us by nature? How about a world where we build a Dyson swarm, solve interplanetary, interstellar, and dare I say intergalactic travel?
Aight imma go cry myself to sleep now
If there are no nation-states, how do we determine what amount of force is justified for self defense? Who enforces violations of that rule and what are the available punishments? What is our recourse when said enforcers decide to ignore any violence against people who deleted their reddit accounts?
Anarchy is a great ideal, but there are some things governments do that we shouldn’t trust to self-organizing collectives. Unless “union of transphobic gang rapists pedophiles” is something you want to defend.
(Bit snarky, but honestly curious as to your answer.)
Anarchy is a great ideal, but there are some things governments do that we shouldn’t trust to self-organizing collectives.
What makes states more trustworthy than self-organizing collectives?
Keep in mind, Israeli invaders (often mislabeled “settlers”) would be an example of self organizers.
Without the backing of the Israeli state they would not be so untouchable.
And would then be touched by which state? Individuals? They organize too - based on race. Who will prevent that organization?
It feels like every hole poked in anarchism is responded to with some level of leadership and organization, defeating the whole argument.
What stops a self-organizing collective from becoming racist, sexist, transohobic, and pro-rape?
I doubt you or I or anyone else here would join such a collective, but what would be our recourse when one forms and rapes my son or lynches your daughter?
Modern states at least have the benefit of a basic theory that they cannot simply un-person people who live within their borders. I dont see what the ewuivalenf mechabism would be to encourage a self-organized collective from doing so.
What stops a self-organizing collective from becoming racist, sexist, transohobic, and pro-rape?
What stops a state from becoming the same?
Modern states at least have the benefit of a basic theory that they cannot simply un-person people who live within their borders.
What are you talking about? Most modern states routinely strip people within and outside of their borders of rights, deport, murder, or enslave them.
Modern states suspend the rights of individuals to lifer or liberty as a punishment for breaking a rule. Rules like “don’t rape people”.
At least in theory, you can move to another nation or campaign for better treatment in essentially all modern states, exempting a small group of pariah states that still mostly don’t rape people as punishment.
Not a single person I’ve seen has so much as suggested any mechanism whatsoever that would keep “self organizing collectives” from becoming fetit pools of bigotry and violence. We know that will happen because such groups arise in every nation already, but their impact is curbed specifically by the power of the state.
“Get rid of the government and we’ll all do the right thing” is libertarian bullshit to cover their glee at taking things away from others. If you aren’t a pro-rape libertarian, figure out how your proposed system would protect the vulnerable at least as well as modern states do.
Modern states suspend the rights of individuals to lifer or liberty as a punishment for breaking a rule. Rules like “don’t rape people”.
They also do it for rules like “wrong skin color,” “wrong country of origin,” “wrong sexuality or gender identity,” “born into poverty and stole food,” “suffering from drug addiction,” or even “possessed a completely harmless drug like weed.” And the punishment is often the total depravation of rights and forced labor tantamount to slavery.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike from stealing loaves of bread.”
At least in theory, you can move to another nation or campaign for better treatment in essentially all modern states, exempting a small group of pariah states that still mostly don’t rape people as punishment.
This wasn’t a good argument in feudal society when peasants could leave and find another Lord or live on their own, and it’s not a good argument now. Choice is pointless when all your choices share the same constraints.
Not a single person I’ve seen has so much as suggested any mechanism whatsoever that would keep “self organizing collectives” from becoming fetit pools of bigotry and violence. We know that will happen because such groups arise in every nation already, but their impact is curbed specifically by the power of the state.
What mechanism prevents states from becoming fetid pools of bigotry and violence, and how has it been working so far? The power of the state does not curb this behavior, it curbs its rivals while engaging in that very behavior themselves by maintaining a monopoly on violence.
“Get rid of the government and we’ll all do the right thing” is libertarian bullshit to cover their glee at taking things away from others. If you aren’t a pro-rape libertarian, figure out how your proposed system would protect the vulnerable at least as well as modern states do.
Anarchy is not the lack of government, it’s horizontal governance. Hierarchy is not necessary for community policing or restorative justice. I’m not an American Libertarian which is an irrational ideology, as it wants capitalism without the state, which is impossible because capitalism is enforced by the state. Without the state protecting private property there can be no capitalism.
That’s a fuckload of words that barely come close to answering the question of “what in this new system of yours protects against rape gangs”?
Maybe drop your edgy hate-fetish and answer the question instead of attacking other ideas? Because this is the closest you came and it’s handwavey as fuck.
Anarchy is not the lack of government, it’s horizontal governance. Hierarchy is not necessary for community policing or restorative justice.
Listing three Adjectice Noun keywords works just fine as for signaling to others who agree with your abstract goals that you can get a beer together, but does fuck all to convince anyone to join or respect your cause.
I care about boys and girls not getting gang-raped, and such rape-gangs being effectively punsihed so they stop being such and others are incentivized not to follow their lead. Extant states today attempt this through the state monopoly on proactice violence and the various political and legal systems which determine when such violence may be used.
You’re suggesting eliminating “the state”, meaning the thing that results from said political activity and through its various judicial systems does the aforementioned proactice violence. While I agree that this system is imperfect, I am not at all convincded that whatever you are suggesting would be even at least as just because you keep wasting your words on arguing how the current system is bad.
Just because the current system is bad doesn’t mean some other system wouldn’t be worse.
That’s why I didn’t propose an anarchist vision. I do recognize the need for states. Just very very weak ones.
Nation states are a different case altogether though. You can have a multinational state. Sure, it is easier for a state to continue existing if the landmass it controls identifies as a single nation. That helps give it legitimacy.
I’d recommend reading more about nation states and why nations ≠ states.
In common English nation, state, and nation-state are near-synonyms for the collectives created by people which exercise ultimate authortiy to enforce rules on conduct within a geographic area, with some variation due to the nominclature used by said collectives for their various subdivisions.
I’m not sealioning. I’d love to read either an actual answer to my questions, a treatise on your “non-anarchist” idea, or even just a passionate rant about terminology.
But quibbling over vocabulary instead of answering questions, without even offering a single link or reference and instead just saying " do your own reading", is simply bad form.
We’re here on social media, and if you don’t want to have a discussion silence is always acceptable.
My bad. I incorrectly assumed that the above terminologies were common knowledge. I should’ve provided direct links. Well, here they are:
Difference between nations and states
Definition of a “nation-state”
When I talk about nations and states, I talk from the perspective of these definitions. As you can see, they’re not really synonyms. It’s not squabbling about terminologies. If we have a different understanding of what different words mean, then our logical arguments are going to look very different. I’m not saying that your definition is wrong or whatever. I’m just clarifying how I define these terms in my arguments. That way, you can understand what I mean to say.
As for the “questions” you posed… I’m not sure exactly what answers you want me to provide. I already told you that I do believe that states need to exist. We’re in agreement there. I just don’t think that it’s healthy for society to divide itself among different nations. Seems quite a waste of mental space, resources, etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Apology accepted. Sorry if I was painfully American)
The (very British) definition of “nation” you used isn’t at all sensible with what the OP asked. To use meriam-Webster’s definition as a guide, you meant definition 1.a.1, but there are six other listed definitions.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation
That being said, a “nationality’ (meaning the same thing you called a” nation") will inevitably arise within any soverign state (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state, meaning 5.a) which persists for a long enough time. The most obvious example perhaps being my own country, in which a distinct “american” /nationality arose after our civil war, although the distnct non-British nationalities of “Canadian” and “Australian” in those respective countries would also be excellent examples. (As would “british” itself.)
While we’re on odd meanings of words, it’s probably worth mentioning that “race” is an archaic synonym for the same idea, although that usage fell out of common usage some time after the establishment of chattel slavery based on skin color.)
consumer cooperatives as the only capital controlling entities who are allowed to buy labor only from worker coops
Who would enforce this?
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I was going to say: one nation for the whole world. But your idea covers more ground.
One global nation with no borders.
This is site is gonna be western-centric so I’d not even bother with those countries:
So my answer is:
Hong Kong, Vietnam, Guangdong Province become one nation
Republic of Yue (粵共和國)
Historically we came from a common group of people… so… this make sense lol
A lot of Vietnamese words are similar to Cantonese.
So we just make this a dual-language nation of Cantonese + Vietnamese (plus we’d give protected status for minority languages/“dialects” and allow schools in their regions to use 50% of the time to use their language/“dialect” only, the other 50% they have to pick either Cantonese or Vietnamese as the main language, and also the other one become their sort of like “minor” language studies in college terms… so this de facto means the Northern part of this nation use Cantonese, Southern part use Vietnamese as the main one…
So someone running for president of the Republic of Yue is legally required to pass fluency test in both national languages to make sure people are united…
Oh fun fact: the 粵 Chinese character (as in 粵語/Cantonese) representing Guangzhou and Cantonese related words, and the 越 Chinese character in 越南 (Vietnam) are pronounced the exact same in both Cantonese and Mandarin.
Anyways… I’m gonna tag my favorite HKer on Lemmy @[email protected]
Hope you’d enjoy living in our Republic of Yue fantasy where Cantonese is a national language for once (can you imagine if Cantonese won the debate to become China’s official language? 🥹)
/non-serious of course… but this would be a very funny country… imagine Cantopop with Vietnamese sprinkled inside? lolol
For sure split up the USA.
Maybe then they’ll be too occupied to meddle with other nations
whispers
Free Cascadia
Every country of more than 100 million people must split in half .
And repeat.
Half of each citizen in the new countries or half of the citizens in each new country?
Israel can go to mars
