I was just thinking the exact opposite, maybe the US needs to split into two nations. I was drawing border lines in my mind around central regions and wondering how things would pan out if they seceded. The lack of geographic continuity would be a problem for the coasts, but perhaps they could join Canada.
Won't this be impossible since you have the urban/rural areas of the same state belonging to these two different nations ? At-least impossible without a gargantuan civil war that makes the 1861 war look like a toddler's quarrel.
True, that was an awkward episode. Now you've got me reading about the motivations for the civil war. I mean obviously slavery, but why go to war rather than let the Confederacy be a separate nation? Seems the fighting was over the political future of yet-to-be Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma (if I've got the right territories there), and whether they would have slavery, once populated.
Blue areas aren’t states. They are cities. Democratic voting counties account for over 70% of the nations gdp. Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.
> Blue areas aren’t states. They are cities. Democratic voting counties account for over 70% of the nations gdp. Conservative counties quite literally cannot support themselves.
Conservative counties produce goods and food that can be produced anywhere.
Democratic counties produce goods that generally require an education and are significantly more valuable. Think big tech, big pharma, engineering, etc.
Democratic counties would be just fine without conservative counties. The inverse is not true.
I think you are ignoring the lag time inherent in radically shifting international food supply chains, even if you have the money to pay almost any price for goods.
If Conservative counties stopped sending food to Democratic counties, the Democratic counties would collapse into chaos LONG before they are able to secure alternative food supplies. It's a Hell of a lot easier to go 90 days without "Big Tech & Big Pharma" than it is to go 90 days without grains and chicken from flyover country.
Blue states have farms as well, it's just not the primary industry. I'm certain blue states would have enough food to last until they could negotiate to trade with other blue states or international partners.
Let's just assume you can secure beef and other foodstuffs, from, say Argentina, on DAY ONE of a Red-County food blockade. A ship from Buenos Ares to Los Angeles takes 20+ days. So even if you acted immediately foodstuffs would arrive in LA two weeks after the supermarkets would be empty.
On this I stand corrected. I was thinking of all the food in the state though, and I mean all food period. Everything in warehouses, everything in every supermarket, etc.
In an emergency situation, all the food in NY state would surely last more than 5 days? Besides, I don't think it would take that long to negotiate food trade for a short term emergency period, maybe from Canada.
If the red states really could hold blue states hostage over food, then, well, that sucks. I guess ideally trade could be stopped gradually in a more civil way instead of blockades where people would suffer, I'm sure a ton of shit red state people buy on Amazon and Walmart has to come from blue states, so there would certainly be something to leverage.
My point was inaccurate, but I think the larger point I was trying to make still stands - eventually, blue states would not need red states if they could move farming to blue states, there is enough land to do so especially looking at the latest map with how few blue states there are. Red states really have little to offer that blue states can't replace in a few months. The inverse is not true.
> In an emergency situation, all the food in NY state would surely last more than 5 days?
I'm having trouble finding detailed sources on food warehousing, but what I've seen so far suggests that because of Just-in-Time logistics, there is actually very little food warehousing away from the "last mile" distribution locations. Keeping large quantities of food stored is expensive (climate control, other methods to avoid contamination) and laborious (government-mandated inspections, etc.), so I'm not surprised if there aren't many places sitting on a 30 or 60-day supply of chicken breasts or something unless some government agency forces them to do it. Businesses see every type of unused inventory as a cost center.
> I guess ideally trade could be stopped gradually in a more civil way instead of blockades where people would suffer,
Well the whole point is to communicate the "nuclear option" of non-gradual blockade that risks immense suffering.
> I'm sure a ton of shit red state people buy on Amazon and Walmart has to come from blue states, so there would certainly be something to leverage.
It has to come through Blue ports, but something like 70% of Amazon products are made in China: ( https://www.statista.com/chart/33376/share-of-items-sold-on-... ) ( https://notochina.org/how-to-tell-if-a-product-is-made-in-ch... ). Sourcing stuff from China is about to become massively more expensive for everyone if Trump goes through with his tariff plan. The other problem for Red States is shifting overall logistics chains away from West Coast container ports (such as Long Beach) to Red Texas and Florida ports. Even if the capacity requirement drops because Red Counties have lower populations than Blue Counties, it's still a logistical headache, and expensive.
> eventually, blue states would not need red states if they could move farming to blue states, there is enough land to do so especially looking at the latest map with how few blue states there are
If it was reasonably profitable for that land to be used for agriculture, you better believe these massive agri-businesses would already be raping, uh, I mean "cultivating" those areas.
> Red states really have little to offer that blue states can't replace in a few months. The inverse is not true.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs would suggest otherwise: people can absolutely live without Apple Vision Pro and Hollywood movies.
Also consider that law & order in cities is already tenuous (partially thanks to Defund the Police and the Summer 2020 riot fallout). Do the cities have the law enforcement manpower or WILLPOWER to suppress even a week's worth of absolute chaos from supply disruptions before they devolve into Haiti-level anarchy? They can barely maintain order even now. ( https://www.foxnews.com/us/fallout-from-weekend-chaos-philly... )
It's much worse in the US though because the gap is so much wider. Even in the UK or Canada or Australia, the right is not opposing climate change or healthcare or anything reasonable to the same extent as in the US.
They absolutely are here in Canada. Especially around climate change because Canada is an oil exporter. And they will be emboldened by what just happened in the US.
Alberta outright banned renewables development for 6 months and then slapped a huge set of restrictions on them after that "moratorium" was lifted. A tax on electric car owners added. The conservative parties nationally are on a constant drum beat about the national carbon tax and it's doomed. Weak emissions caps we have are also doomed. Any little things that have been done for the last 10 years will be undone.
At a recent party convention in Alberta, the ruling party passed a climate denial resolution as official party policy.
Amazingly lots of people on this forum trying to sanitize what these people are about.
Try splitting Georgia, where Harris wins a few populous counties with a 30 to 70 pp margin, and Trump leads the lump of smaller counties with a 30 to 70 pp margin.
They reelected the DA that's prosecuting Trump on one of the populous counties, on the same election where the state swung further towards Trump.
In the past, maybe. Trump won the popular vote last night. He swept almost everything, as painful as that is for me to say. There is no way to divide the country without mass migration which would never happen.
Cross the border from here in Canada into very "blue" New York and you'll drive through a huge swathe of what is actually "red" Trump country in Western New York.
Outside of the urban areas even "blue" states are red, or "purple."
The reality is that America voted for this guy. It's not nearly as regionally divided as liberals in America want to think.
For me, it means not going there anymore. I just won't cross the border for any reason.
Yeah I live rural Ontario. Last municipal election people's lawns were covered with idiotic "Stop Woke" signs. And my parents are in rural Alberta. Oh boy.
Fair enough but you need to deal with the proliferation of troll accounts and pointless political sniping that's propagated on here in the last couple of years.
The person I replied to was not engaging in good faith discussion, which is evident simply by looking at everything else they posted yesterday.
As much as I feel that HN's tone policing is de facto defence of status quoism, guidelines here are that direct personal attacks aren't permitted.
However you may be pleased to know that ideological battle isn't either.
If you can't find a suitably witty or effective response, none is often better. You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.
You can also email mods at hn@ycombinator.com with issues. I do this frequently on all manner of points, most often title or URL issues, but other guidelines violations as well, and often that results in accounts being banned.
Trust me that this can be sorely aggrevating and crossing the lines tempting, but you'll ultimately be a more persuasive and effective advocate working within the rules here.
The Joye of Ye Taxes is that you cannot choose to stop paying them just because of a disagreement about how they are spent. Elections need to be won first.
