...surplus, there will be people who will try to take it
In a country where everyone is armed, the unproductive don't usually try to take it, at least not directly. Normally, they employ politicians to do it for them.
First, for assuming that state sovereignty would necessarily mean greater individual freedom than federal supremacy.
Europe is not analogous to the United States in almost any respect. If your believe otherwise, your arguments are going to be misleading because your thinking is very superficial. Again you show your socialists tendencies in failing to recognize that governments compete with each other just as do corporations and other businesses. Check the tax incentives offered to relocating businesses if you think otherwise. Because of the dominance achieved by the federal government, much of the competition between states has been eliminated because the Democrats in power in the federal government decreed and provided carrots and sticks to the states to adopt model codes and regualtions. Without this top down forced uniformity, regional nation/states would be looking at a highly mobile population using the internet to screen for the things that appeal to them. Those looking for welfare might choose NY or Kalifornia. Those with wealth and high income would look for tax friendly states. Those seeking freedom would look for states with no restrictions or regualtions on property and property rights. They would also look for a judicial system that believes in enforcing contracts and existing law rather than legislating and serving as an empathetic support system.
The answer may not be secession or litigation but persuasion.
I have debated with liberals and Democrats for most of the forty years of my adult life. I am unaware of a single instance in which I ever changed their minds about anything. Rush is right! Liberals are incapable of intellectual thought and rational decision making. Liberals feel and rely on their emotions as a substitute for thought. Socialists are insane. For them, rational thought is impossible. One half of our current population fits into these categories. It would take at least two or three generations to bring about effective changes beginning with the education of the children of the existing generation of Americans. If you have been paying attention, Democrats have no intention of actually allowing education to occur in the United States. It would bring their reign of power to an end. And look where the greatest concentration of liberals and socialists live.
I will have more to say about what courses of actions might be taken on future threads after hearing the thoughts of other contributors.
Why people in countries like Brazil or Mexico are poor is worth thinking about, but it is true that such countries haven't developed extensive welfare states, while most wealthier countries have. There may be counterexamples, but this relationship is also worth thinking about. Simply assuming that secession would change this may be naive.
...surplus, there will be people who will try to take it
->In a country where everyone is armed, the unproductive don't usually try to take it, at least not directly. Normally, they employ politicians to do it for them.
I certainly don't disagree with this. It's pretty much what I said.
-> Again you show your socialists tendencies in failing to recognize that governments compete with each other just as do corporations and other businesses. Check the tax incentives offered to relocating businesses if you think otherwise. Because of the dominance achieved by the federal government, much of the competition between states has been eliminated because the Democrats in power in the federal government decreed and provided carrots and sticks to the states to adopt model codes and regualtions. Without this top down forced uniformity, regional nation/states would be looking at a highly mobile population using the internet to screen for the things that appeal to them.
That "highly mobile population using the Internet" is already here -- and on a global scale. Whether relocating our telemarketing and data processing to India will make Americans happier, wealthier or freer is another question worthy of discussion. But what you want is virtually here, and on a scale that boggles the mind. There is some logic in allowing states more leeway, but that question is dwarfed by global competition and the exploitation of competitive advantages by countries like Mexico or China.
Had we taken the road of true "state sovereignty" that some recommend, though, we wouldn't have this degree of mobility on the national level, though. States would use that sovereignty to impose regulations on trade and extract money where they could, just as the federal government does, and just as the states do when they can. Our national market was an outgrowth of the movement away from state sovereignty. The "sovereign states" before the Civil War wouldn't allow the mobility for labor we take for granted.
There may not much point in arguing with someone who thinks that he can look into the hearts of others or that people he disagrees with are crazy. But for the record, I've never been a liberal or a socialist. I have gotten really burned out on all this secession talk.
All governments with elections and universal suffrage are dominated by political elites who get elected by promising people things. All economies are dominated by economic elites whose primary purpose is to get profits and whose concern for political or moral values is subordinated to this imperative. These are the two dominant forces in every state and every industrialized country. The idea that somehow breaking the country apart will change this is unfounded.
The same sorts of people with the same motivations hold power in Massachusetts and Mississippi, though the relations between political and economic elites may differ. They have to put up with different preferences from different publics, but they do their best to turn out similar results wherever they are. What makes you think that secession or partition would change that?
People want to believe that secession would make "people like us" come to power, rather than the kind of people who usually end up exercising power. Given how the world works now, what evidence is there for this?
Consider that people a generation ago moved to low tax, less government states to get away from high taxation and excessive regulation. Today a lot of those states are tilting Democratic and inclining towards more taxes and more government.
Development has changed these states, and those migrants or their children or the people who followed them are now voting in Democrats. There may be a state whose political culture is strong enough to resist the change (say, Utah), but the change that other states have gone through (New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona, maybe the Carolinas, etc.) is something that all would-be secessionists should reflect upon.
The very process that you refer to of states angling to get new contracts and development will help to thwart any hopes from secession. Competition for investment makes elites in Southern states want to take down the Confederate battle flag and makes Salt Lake want to appear more like New York or Los Angeles.
That global competition for investments and markets is no friend to strong local governments or distinctiveness among states and localities. Competition tends to mean making a place attractive to increasingly homogenous elites of bankers and CEOs, and this may not reflect people's own moral values.
Competition between localities does help lower taxes, but it also gets us big sports and arts projects that take more out of our pockets.