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[Starver]

The problem is that most of the soldiers manning those facilities are not from Colorado. Will the base commander at Minot follow the orders from Bismarck to launch airstrikes and missiles on his family and friends in Wisconsin? Even if he does pass on the command, will his troops follow it?

Depends on whether Uncle Wyatt, back home, is perhaps just a huge PITA, and the neighbours Ethan and Aubrey never did keep their yard mowed properly, even though they're still 'borrowing' the ride-on...

[Frumple]

... they must take landscaping very seriously wherever you are if an intercontinental missile barrage is acceptable reprisal for poor lawn maintenance.

[Dorsidwarf]

... they must take landscaping very seriously wherever you are if an intercontinental missile barrage is acceptable reprisal for poor lawn maintenance.

[ETHIC:DISAGREE_LANDSCAPING:NUCLEAR_EXCHANGE]

[RedKing]

I think you all are taking my suggestion far more seriously than it was intended.

However, you're also assuming that the Federal government would vanish overnight, when what I said was "devolve". Meaning a more orderly transition of power, something akin to what happened with USSR->CIS->Russia and a bunch of other new countries.

I would see it as a transition to a weak confederation of all 50 states, which would then transition to regional supragovernments that the states would form and join of their own design. You'd probably see CA, WA and OR form one; NY and the New England states form one, the upper Midwest form one, the South form one (and yes, it would probably be some half-assed attempt to reform the Confederacy), etc.

I've come to believe that democracy has both a minimum and maximum optimal size. Three people doesn't make for a good democracy. Neither does three billion. Honestly, I think even America's ~318 million has surpassed the optimal maximum. If we continue to grow, we're either going to move towards a more authoritarian central government like China, or a hopelessly broken decentralized democracy like India. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the optimal maximum is 200-250 million, though cultural factors will change that. A heterogenous population is going to have a lower effective max than a homogenous one.

Breaking the US up into smaller, more homogenous chunks potentially means better, more responsive governance for everyone. Not that I expect to see it in my lifetime (unless it's done the quick and ugly way, which I'd rather not see) but I think long-term the US is unsustainable in its current form.

[misko27]

Greeks were pretty sure anything bigger then a city is too much territory for democracy. Times change.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We just need to hold everyone down and surgically implant transmitters in their brains in order to create democracy in realtime.

[Frumple]

I'm up for it. You bring the clamps, I'll bring the hedge clippers.

[smirk]

I guess, then, we just have to wait for things to get so utterly terrible that the majority of folks agree that something desperately needs to change.

Yeah, good luck with that. I won't be holding my breath (at least, not until after they repeal the Clean Air Act). The US is terminally fucked. Best option at this point (IMHO) would be to devolve into a handful of smaller countries with more homogenous populations, so people could actually agree on shit and get things done.

You will all be welcome in Barter Town The Chicagoligarchy, provided you can prove your usefulness and pass the pizza test.


In other politics-as-entertainment news, I think we've finally reached peak Godwin. The NYT published a thousand-word book review of a new Hitler biography this week, and the reviewer doesn't mention the name 'Donald Trump' even once. It is masterful.

[SalmonGod]

I do think that is the best thing that can happen.  Not specifically that, but I mean making better use of technology to determine stakeholders in any given decision being made (instead of just blanket declaring everybody within a region to be a stakeholder because much of the time being someone's next door neighbor doesn't give you any right to decide shit like laws regarding sexuality and whatnot), and to streamline/amplify effective communication between those stakeholders to generate the best compromises.

And yeah, as anti-authoritarian as I am, I don't genuinely support violent revolution either.  Not because it's unpleasant, but because it's totally pointless so long as people don't have a clear path leading towards a different way of life to follow afterwards.  Now if that path is established and existing authorities block it, then revolution is necessary in my opinion.  But Americans are very, very far from being able to agree on what that path is.  If we're heading towards any kind of violence, it's civil war, not revolution.

Unrelated

[Rolan7]

We just need to hold everyone down and surgically implant transmitters in their brains in order to create democracy in realtime.

Like the Borg!

[WealthyRadish]

I'd like to see a free-for-all between the states. Colorado has quite a few ICBMs and national air force facilities, could be enough to blitz the yuppies and challenge the decaying easterners...

The problem is that most of the soldiers manning those facilities are not from Colorado. Will the base commander at Minot follow the orders from Bismarck to launch airstrikes and missiles on his family and friends in Wisconsin? Even if he does pass on the command, will his troops follow it?

I think if the manpower shortage is bad enough that we need to have foreign prisoners and other enemies of the fatherstate operate the missile controls, we've got bigger issues. Worst case scenario we have to limit ourselves to nuking Florida, in which case we win the gratitude of every other state, especially Florida.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We just need to hold everyone down and surgically implant transmitters in their brains in order to create democracy in realtime.

Like the Borg!

Why do you refuse our path? Here there is no pain, no loneliness, no rejection, the total absence of all the sins and fears of humanity. We are all as one. Here, there are wonders.

Resistance is futile.

[mainiac]

We tried that; clearly it didn't work.

Yes if you ignore all the ways things are getting better nothing is getting better on gay rights, climate policy, ending wars, progressive taxation...

Maybe things start getting better when you stop judging the state of the union on the standards of what iconoclasts think about contemporary institutions.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Trump's got plenty of Charisma. It's Wis he's lacking. Int he's above average but not stupendous on. Hillary's the one with low Charisma, for a politician. High Int and very decent Wis, but they're only just making up for her lower ability bonus to the Diplomacy (Cha) skill. She is good enough to have very nice Sense Motive, Perception, and Gather Information skills, though, at least.

Meanwhile Donald could Bluff his way into a Beholder den, simply by force of will, apparently.

Situational bonus, not character skill.

[Rolepgeek]

Trump's got plenty of Charisma. It's Wis he's lacking. Int he's above average but not stupendous on. Hillary's the one with low Charisma, for a politician. High Int and very decent Wis, but they're only just making up for her lower ability bonus to the Diplomacy (Cha) skill. She is good enough to have very nice Sense Motive, Perception, and Gather Information skills, though, at least.

Meanwhile Donald could Bluff his way into a Beholder den, simply by force of will, apparently.

Situational bonus, not character skill.

Eh, Clinton's got some penalties to be sure, but Donald has successfully pulled out declaring bankruptcy how many times while still remaining incredibly wealthy? Creating situational bonuses is part of those skills too, ya know.

On another note:

I would like to note my vehement disagreement on multiple levels with people who want to burn the whole system down. A. I live in that system, B. So does my family, and C. Ask not! What your country can do to make you better off. Ask! What you can do to make it better.

System needs some cleaning up, not catastrophe. The nice thing about democracy is that it can and does stretch to accommodate change in popular opinion. The downside of democracy is that it is thereby vulnerable to the less intelligent perceived whims of the public, such as the 9/11 bill. The way we run it we also have good and bad parts to do with appointing people and lobbying and etc., but, point is. America ain't ruined. Even if Trump became president, it wouldn't be ruined. It'd be worse off for it, but we've had Teddy Roosevelt as president, and if you go back and look the man was somewhere around as crazy. People adapt to anything. Good or bad. Countries don't always, but overall, it'll survive. It just takes time for accurate information to disseminate to such a degree that people act on it.