Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 12:51:55 +0300 (EET DST) From: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee> To: wes@intele.net Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: America the Beautiful Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960405124619.8769C-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee> In-Reply-To: <199604050605.XAA00232@obie.softweyr.com>
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Eat good food, preserve nature, be nice to all nice people :) On Thu, 4 Apr 1996 wes@intele.net wrote: > Jordan K. Hubbard writes: > > > The more interesting question to me personally is how long *Minnesota* > > > will remain a part of the Union. (Not long I hope. Better a dead > > > > I wonder if you're really serious here.. It's kind of amusing, but > > I've had a lot of my european friends ask me what America is going to > > do in the next 50 years now that we're at end-of-empire and sort of > > generally sick of playing self-appointed policeman to the world > > (Vietnam was sort of the beginning of the end in many, many ways). > > At least our generation is. I don't see many signs of this in the > aging WWII set, or even in the ex-hippy set. Unfortunately, the > older ones are still running the country. I hope we can hang on > till 2000, and get a good 35-40 year old President in office who > doesn't want to play cop to the rest of the world. > > > I say that we'll still be here, just fragmented into a bunch of > > nation-states. New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada will probably be one > > independant territory, I expect the northies to go their own way > > (Montana/North Dakota, etc) and California, of course, will finally > > acknowledge the obvious and become its own country. > > I'm leaning in the opposite direction -- I can see all of North > America becoming one large country. We've almost become one large > economy already, what with the U.S. bailout of the Mexican banking > mess; the cross-border trade being enhanced by NAFTA, the porosity of > both of the U.S. borders (intentional on the north, but not on the > south). Personally, if we manage to keep a reasonably representative > government, I don't see this as a bad thing at all. America has > suceeded so far *because* of the melting pot idea, and more of a > melting pot will make us stronger. We'll also maintain the largest > collection of natural resources in the known world. Perhaps all it needs to make things better is some restructioning of where the taxes go? As a rule (it always holds) - the more money the locals get from the taxes the more they do to make it stay so. So wouldn't it be good to divide it (USA) into some number of regions by states which had more control over "local" taxes (with the word local to start disappering)? > > > No idea whether or not the transition will be peaceful thought. > > Depends on how attached the Federalists are to the idea of a complete > > Union. My feeling is that the writing on the wall will be there for > > many years before the first official break-away, and by then everyone > > will have had time to get used to it. That is, unless you silly > > Minnesotans jump the gun or something.. :-) > > Those Minnesotans could be dangerous, if they can figure out how to > organize their mosquitoes into an air force... > > -- > Wes Peters | Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late > Softweyr | The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder > Consulting | I'm an over forty victim of fate... > wes@intele.net | Jimmy Buffett >
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