Maybe, but shouldn't the people of upstate NY be allowed to make that decision for themselves? By saying "no", that basically sounds like authoritarianism, tha

Maybe, but shouldn't the people of upstate NY be allowed to make that decision for themselves? By saying "no", that basically sounds like authoritarianism, that 20M people shouldn't be allowed to decide for themselves what their governance should look like, rightly or wrongly. Finally, I'm not an upstate NYer, but it's not just some rural area; there's multiple good-sized cities there, including Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany. There's also a lot of farming there; where do you think NYC gets its food? I live down in Virginia now but I frequently get milk from NY. Finally, I think more rural areas might be happier joining forces with other such areas. Perhaps upstate NY would like to join with Vermont, or with part of northern Pennsylvania (including Erie). (Actually, I'm thinking VT, NH, and most of Maine except the part near Boston would be better off joining into a single state, and also taking the eastern sliver of NYS that borders VT.) People aren't going to change their values if they have someone else's values forced on them from outside; they have to realize their values aren't working and change them willingly. It's just like how Christianity was suppressed in Russia by the Soviets, and then had a huge resurgence after the USSR fell, and now the Russian Orthodox church is a huge force in Russia today. People in these regions are going to cling to their values even more strongly as long as people in the cities force legislation on them that they don't agree with. The answer is to leave them to their own devices and let them fail by themselves.