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If the United States is becoming more repressive, where can one go? Other English speaking countries such as Australia, England, and Singapore have problems wit
by MarkSweep 13y ago
If the United States is becoming more repressive, where can one go? Other English speaking countries such as Australia, England, and Singapore have problems with freedom of expression.
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoLearn another language? :-)
- randomchars 13y agoAnd then go where?
- rgrieselhuber 13y agoThat's a whole other question but at least it opens your options up a bit more.
- Svip 13y agoForm a new country? Speaking as amateur cartographer, I support all independence movements, because it will give cartographers new borders to draw on maps and thus a reason for people to buy new maps. Declare the East Coast US States independent and be done with it; I am tired of waiting.
- jerf 13y ago"Declare the East Coast US States independent and be done with it; I am tired of waiting." How does that solve this problem? I mean, I can't even guess which side of this issue you think the "East Coast" is on.
- Svip 13y agoOh, it is entirely unrelated to this particular issue. But the population of America could benefit from more local democracy rather than something far away as Washington, D.C.. Now one may argue that that is already defined in the Constitution and that even if it wasn't, more local politics could be enforced by law by reducing the reach of the federal government. But I doubt either of us are that naïve. The USA have proved that democracy does not scale well. And that is why it has moved to centralise power ever since the Constitution was signed. It may not be a victory for privacy, but it would be a victory for democracy.
- jerf 13y agoAh, now that I can almost get behind. One of the few plausible ways out of the mess we find ourselves in right now is a strong movement towards states rights. Nominally, the states have a lot more power in our system then they are currently exercising, so it doesn't require any new law, just some assertions of what already exists (albeit in the form of Constitutional Conventions rather than simply asserting laws, which would be simpler). It's not my perfect ideological solution by any means, but it's one of the few practical ones, inasmuch as it does involve walking up to a group of people and asking them to go grab more power as competing interests, rather than asking people with power to unilaterally disarm, which is pretty much a "fat chance" option. Secession is in some sense the ultimate State's right extreme, but I wouldn't advocate it until more normal avenues were tried and failed. It has... proved hazardous, to say the least.
- Svip 13y agoI realise of course you refer to the American Civil War. But there are some striking differences between then and now. I imagine it would be like this; a state (or more) announce that they will hold a referendum on independence, months (or even years) before the actual referendum will take place (similar to how it will take place in Scotland). This will give the President and the Federal Government time to react without having to sort to arms right away. Furthermore, a referendum is particularly what will set it apart from the American Civil War; this will be the will of the people (of that state, obviously) and not merely the will of the state (which was the case during the American Civil War, it was merely the legislatures that decided to secede, and not by referendum). This will make it much harder to justify for the federal government to intervene with military. Seeing as the process will open and peaceful, it would be seen as a considerable overreaction by the federal government to strike down with force on a seceding state. In addition because war has gotten so much more terrible, and I doubt you'd even convince the army of doing so. In short; I do not believe that you should be afraid of a military response to an independence, as long as you play fair. That's just intimidation. It would be sad to see that the only thing keeping the American states united was fear. However, I do agree with you that independence should be the last resort. But considering the last few decades, it seems many things have already been tried.
- ctdonath 13y agoThe Southern US States tried that. Didn't go very well. (Bloodiest war the USA was involved in.)
- MarkSweep 13y agoI'm learning Japanese, but what I hear about their criminal justice system is not inspiring.
- antocv 13y agoYou cant flee anywhere nice, Snowden is trying to you and you see 99.9% of the world countries are willing to stuff their own constitutions and human rights treaties up their asses and stick their head in the sand at request of USA.
- tobiasu 13y agoRussia is more like 11%, not 0.01 ;) scnr
- toyg 13y agoRussia is not doing anything different: they are not going to grant Snowden asylum or citizenship. So they're well and truly in that 99.99% at this point, together with China and Venezuela.
- tobiasu 13y agoThey did offer him asylum, with the condition to shut the fuck up and not continually interfere in international politics. He rejected it for his own reasons.
- toyg 13y agoTheir offer was clearly meant to be rejected; it was like offering Richard Stallman a job at Microsoft as long as he shut up about this whole Free Software stuff.
- lttlrck 13y agoDid you really take Putin at face value? I think it is a safe bet that they knew what Snowdens values were before making the offer and they fully expected him to turn it down. Or they knew it for certain...
- ajuc 13y agoTry to do to Russia what Snowden did to USA and you will find polonium in your food. Also falsified elections. Not that good place if you like freedom.
- rwmj 13y agoThere are no more wild frontiers until we move into space, unfortunately.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoThis Snowden affair made me realize that if no government wants to claim you, you are truly screwed. That's a modern development that I do not like.
- agilebyte 13y agoAlso, you can go to country X that may not be repressive, but if you want to call abroad or use the internet, you are still inspected by routers in all the other countries that you would consider repressive.
- marklit 13y agoI you can write code there are a lot of countries you could support yourself in. I've visited and in some cases worked in 49 countries with minimal foreign language skills.
- wcbeard10 13y agoSeasteading?
- el_zorro 13y agoThis sounds ridiculous, but lately I've been of the opinion that this planet is borked. I hold out serious hope for Elon Musk and his Mars colony. I seriously believe that we as a species need a fresh start in a new place. We need a new planet so we can try new things, create new ideas, and generally liberate ourselves of traditional conventions. It sounds pie-in-the-sky, but people are actively working on it and I hope to one day count myself among them. America used to be the place where things like this could happen, but that's not so much anymore. There's still innovation, but the trend doesn't look good and most of the world just doesn't care.
- flyinRyan 13y agoWhat do you imagine will happen if Musk lands on Mars? Various countries will be claiming jurisdiction before he lands (assuming they don't already). They could simply call mars an extension of their country and hold him accountable to their laws for anything he does on Mars.
- el_zorro 13y agoThey could, but I'd like to see them enforce it. The worst they could do on Earth would be to stop rocket launches to Mars (which would be bad) but rockets can be launched in a variety of places. They represent a large injection of wealth into an area, and the economic benefits of hosting rocket infrastructure outweighs the cost of dealing with a loud but ultimately toothless colony. By the time Mars would represent a 'threat' it will be essentially self-sufficient and then there is little hold Earth would have over it.
- flyinRyan 13y agoThose on earth would still have the biggest military and as soon as the martian colony made it clear that they didn't submit to which ever overlords claimed them, that army would be in space on its way to Mars.
- adventured 13y agoFleeing earth doesn't instantly change human nature. The risks to liberty will remain no matter where you go. The George Washington willing-to-cede-his-throne type will be just as rare on Mars in 2095 as it is today, as it was throughout history.