6 ms·

On the Scottish independence referendum and the post-Westphalian settlement

56 points by cstross 12y ago

a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
Smaller nations sounds nice but in the intermediate term reality Scotland would become a minor province of the EU nation. It'd be trading Britain for something much bigger.
- cstross 12y ago
  We've already got that something (the EU). It's relatively benign. (Meanwhile, we've got an extra tier of government that insists on spending tax revenue raised in Scotland on stuff the Scottish people really don't want.)
  - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
    The EU is an ongoing and succeeding effort to replicate the United States Federal government in Europe. Scotland will eventually wind up having as much say as New Hampshire does in very important matters, such as control of its borders and agriculture policy.
    - nbouscal 12y ago
      That's an interesting choice of example state given New Hampshire's significant role in primary elections.
      - notahacker 12y ago
        The tendency of a few states (including a handful of very small ones) to get disproportionate attention at the federal level (and sometimes accompanying pork-barrel policies) is a bug rather than a feature of the US system.
        smacktoward 12y ago
        There's nothing inherent in the American election system that requires New Hampshire and Iowa to get the attention they do. That's strictly an artifact of how the parties have chosen to schedule their primary calendars; New Hampshire and Iowa happened to be put first in the schedule, and people started paying more attention to them on the theory that winning these early primaries could start a snowball effect of support in the later ones. Either party could choose any time it wants to reshuffle their primary calendar and move some other states before NH and IA, or to hold all their primaries at once on the same day. There's just not much pressure on them to do so, so inertia keeps them where they are.
        maxerickson 12y ago
        The state parties set the dates. Of course the national parties can influence that, but there is no cohesive group mandating the dates. A not very talked about aspect of U.S. politics is how much influence peddling is possible at that level.
      - baddox 12y ago
        But they still can't make treaties with foreign nations, raise a military, mint coins, or any of several other things generally associated with sovereign nations.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      "control of its borders" I'm pleased to say that we don't seem to have quite the same obsession in Scotland with keeping immigrants out as a lot of people in the UK. In fact the SNP is rather keen on encouraging immigration. I'd far rather have the right to live and work anywhere in the EU than be trapped in the UK with Boris Johnson as PM running second hand UKIP policies.
      - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        Control of borders is practically the definition of a nation. If you don't have a say in who comes in, you aren't a nation.
        tptacek 12y ago
        Control of borders is practically the definition of a nation in the sense of Westphalian Sovereignty, but arguing against that is Stross' whole point.
        a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        He never really makes a coherent point about how his smaller states will handle borders. Bringing up Westphalia in this particular context is silly because it's an eternal truth. If your people don't control access to the land, you will lose control of the land. This was true ten thousand years ago and it's true of Tibetans now.
        tptacek 12y ago
        An "eternal truth"? It's called Westphalian Sovereignty because it's the result of the eponymous historical event, prior to which extranational forces played a huge role in the internal politics of states.
        a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        What point are you making? A chimp can understand this need to control land access. Saying "westphalia" over and over sheds no light. Control over immigration and land use was not invented by 17th century european diplomats if that's what you think. To the extent nations failed to control their borders in the past they were simply unfortunately weak nations.
    - ghaff 12y ago
      Note however that EU != Schengen zone. (Though there's more to control of borders than simply crossing borders without immigration checks.) In fact, UK border checks are relatively strict even for other EU citizens.
      - jsnell 12y ago
        The strictest UK border check I've gone through in a few years was putting my (EU) passport into an automated passport reader and looking into a camera for 5 seconds.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    The UK has a government that spends tax revenues raised in the UK on stuff people in [some parts of] the UK don't want. A new country called Scotland will it seems have a government that spends tax revenues raised in Scotland on stuff people in [some parts of] Scotland don't want. If you lived in a tax raising city state then your city would do the same thing. If you didn't want an extra tier of government then why vote for one? We could have saved £414 million in one swoop on that.
    - wisty 12y ago
      The main problem is, revenue and spending are rarely done by the same people. The UK can blame the Scottish Parliament on reckless spending, and be forced to raise taxes. A local government can recklessly spend (or neglect infrastructure), and force the Scottish to bail them out. Should a state government fight to create jobs (even if it annoys special interest groups), or just rely on welfare from the federal government? If there's a government that is in charge of major infrastructure, health, education, social welfare, and taxes, then there's far less buck passing. States spend the big bucks, so states should be responsible for raising the big bucks. The other problem is that people only care about the highest level of government. Probably because it's more efficient for news organisations to only report on the Federal level (since the story will be more widely read). Look at the US. It seems that virtually everything gets blamed on Obama or the House, despite the fact that the real decisions are generally done at the state level, with far less scrutiny, because it's cheaper for the newspapers to just send a single correspondent to Washington, and report on what's going on there. I don't even know the current Premier (governor, in US terms) of my state. Not since a "memory lapse" in front of a corruption inquiry forced the last one out a few months ago, after the previous party lost a string of premiers also due to corruption - I just can't keep up. So there's two problems - no-one cares about anything other than the top level of politics (since the papers are all national now, and it's more efficient to just look at what happens at the Federal level), and there's too much buck passing between the level of government that has the money, and the level of government that spends it.
    - smsm42 12y ago
      One could argue that the smaller the government is and the more local the taxes are, less is the percentage spent on the things inhabitants of this locality do not want. Example: if you raise taxes on city level, then spending decisions are influenced only by people living in your city, and the chance it would be spent on building an airport in the next county that nobody flies from, to suit some politician, are much less. OTOH, if all the taxes are collected by a huge central government, the chances that you will disagree with a lot of its spending are much higher. Of course, the hybrid model is possible - with only taxes that are needed specifically for big things - like national defense - collected on hight level, and taxes needed for local things - like police, roads, schools, etc. - collected on the lower levels. That's how the federalism works.
- baddox 12y ago
  As opposed to being part of the UK, which is part of the EU nation?
  - sentenza 12y ago
    Not for long. As a continental European, I'd be quite surprised if the UK voted to stay in the EU in the 2017 referendum. There is just so much hatred for the EU coming out of the UK that by now, its leaving almost seems a forgone conclusion.
    - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
      As a Brit (English, living in Scotland), I'd say that there is a way to go before that and would make two points: 1) there is only one party promising that referendum and they're behind in the polls 2) current polls say that we'd vote to stay (http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/06/17/eu-referendum-record-lead/ http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/06/17/eu-referendum-record-lea...), even before any renegotiation. There are other polls which have said otherwise but YouGov provide an on-going tracker which I think shows that, while the level of support has changed, broadly we still support EU membership. Obviously all very uncertain (and until a couple of weeks ago polls were sure Scotland would stay in the UK) but I'd say that you shouldn't confuse the volume of some of the negative views on Europe with them being a consensus - most people are quietly happy with the status quo.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Smaller nations sounds nice but in the intermediate term reality Scotland would become a minor province of the EU nation. If it's admitted at all, which is far from certain.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
    > If it's admitted (to the EU) at all, which is far from certain. I don't see why it would not be admitted. The EU is not in the habit of turning down that kind of country: wealthy, peaceful, of Christian heritage and adjoining several EU countries. And if you want to play that game, it's not certain that England will remain in the EU. An independent Scotland could well end up the only part of Britain left in the EU. Yes that would be a crashingly stupid thing for Britain to collectively do. But it's not impossible.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > I don't see why it would not be admitted. Inability to come to mutually agreeable terms -- Scotlands wants (1) essentially automatic admission without the normal new state process, and (2) to keep the UK's special exemption for using the sterling, and (3) to get part of the UK's rebates. AFAICT, much of the rest of the EU is opposed to all three of those. Spain is particularly opposed to the first (and possibly to Scottish admission at all), because an independent Scotland getting into the EU, especially on fast-track process, is seen as encouraging Catalonian independence. > The EU is not in the habit of turning down that kind of country: wealthy, peaceful, of Christian heritage and adjoining several EU countries. First, I think you are considering the wrong category: the category of interest is "states having recently broken away from existing EU member-states", particularly as the UK isn't the only EU member with regions that have some pro-independence sentiments, and admitting such a breakaway state is something that states that have their own aspiring breakaway regions are likely to see as providing encouragement to those breakaway regions. Also, an independent Scotland would be adjoining exactly one other country (the UK), and one of the reasons that seems to keep being cited for it leaving is that, even with Scotland still in the UK and exerting pro-EU pressure, the future of the UK in the EU is locally considered less than certain, so I'm not sure where you get that "adjoining several EU countries" is a fair description. > And if you want to play that game, it's not certain that England will remain in the EU. Of course its not; I don't dispute that at all.
drpgq 12y ago
"The population of the American Colonies in 1790 is estimated at roughly 2.7 million; the United States today has over 300 million inhabitants. In 1780 England and Wales had around 7.5 million inhabitants" I didn't know that ratio between the England and Wales population versus the American colonies was that small at that time. I would have thought it would have been bigger.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  Perhaps a more useful metric would have been urban v rural populations - but even then Watts engine had only been around for fifteen years (1776 ironically).
- adventured 12y ago
  Not sure where they got that. The 1790 census says 3.893 million, with 694,000 being slaves. (Jefferson and Washington both believed the true figure to be higher) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_Census http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_Census
junto 12y ago
I like the Swiss 'canton' concept, where each canton is fairly autonomous, with its own constitution and courts. These cantons were previously completely separate states, ironically formed as part of the Treaty of Westphalia: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland I'd like to hear any Swiss opinions on this system, since they have to live in it, but as an outsider I've always considered this local governance, with limited national state powers to be attractive. However, I'm not sure whether this kind of model is applicable everywhere. I'm guessing there are some historical, geographical, cultural and/or economic reasons for its success in Switzerland compared to other countries.
- heydenberk 12y ago
  One need look no further than the US to see the folly of a weak federal system.
  - joesmo 12y ago
    IMO, the federal government is much too strong in the US and consistently gaining strength, especially in the last eighty to ninety years. Why do you say it's a weak federal system? I can't think of anything a national government should (and shouldn't) do that it does not have the power to do.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Why do you say it's a weak federal system? The US can show the problems of a weak federal system without the current US government being a weak federal system: the system under the Articles of Confederation was a very weak federal system; the system under the Constitution prior to the Civil War was a weak federal system. Both the issues that the former produced that resulted in the Constitutional Convention and the latter system's end in the Civil War can be viewed as illustrating problems of a weak federal system.
      - smacktoward 12y ago
sparkzilla 12y ago
This guy dresses up his reasons in pseudo-intellectual guff. If we follow his reasoning reductio ad absurdum what would be the size of the smallest state he'd like? One with 15 million people? One with 5 million? One with one person? In reality he just doesn't like the English, specifically English conservatives. The Scots claim they don't like being ruled by people they didn't vote for. But they were happy to vote for Labor for 15 years before this Tory government. Part of a mature society is that you understand that around half of the time you don't get who you vote for. I'm no great fan of Paul Krugman but he correctly points out that the new Socialist State of Scotland would be set adrift in a world of capital flows it cannot hope to control. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/opinion/paul-krugman-scots-what-the-heck.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/opinion/paul-krugman-scots... David Cameron should never have let it go this far. A federal system would have made far more sense, and not divided Scotland's people and broken a successful union.
kryptiskt 12y ago
I dislike small countries, I felt claustrophobic back when Sweden wasn't a member of the EU and a move abroad would need to be planned many months in advance with reams of paperwork. Problems were smaller scale back when we had those itsy-bitsy countries that Stross is so romantic about. Small countries today only breeds parochialism (not in my backyard!) and cultural backwardness. And EU isn't an escape valve from that. Multiply the number of countries in the EU by three and watch it grind to a halt. I wouldn't mind a nordic union swallowing all the nordic states and move away from the romantic idea of a state for every nation.
- adventured 12y ago
  New Zealand, Hong Kong (pre 1997), and Singapore, aren't really what I'd call culturally backwards. They may not be on the cutting edge culturally, but they're not backwards. And on the flip side, there are plenty of large countries that are narrow minded and backwards in every respect. I'd argue most countries in the world today are either slightly or extremely backwards and mostly tend to their own sphere of matters. There are perhaps a mere three dozen countries for which such isn't true. India and China have 2.4 billion people, I'd argue about 2/3 of those people live culturally backwards (what a cultural snob from NY, Paris, London etc might define as such anyway) and narrowly focused lives. Most of those people have very little real knowledge or awareness of the greater international world. Their problems, knowledge, experiences and lives in general are all extremely local. I struggle to see that parochialism and cultural backwardness is in any way particular to size.
  - kryptiskt 12y ago
    If you slice and dice say the UK into smaller pieces, do you think London are gonna help Tyneside when the latter is hit by economic trouble? That's the parochialism that results from small countries, an endless accounting of small favors granted just because a border is put up and some people are defined as strangers.
- mcantelon 12y ago
  >the romantic idea of a state for every nation Yes, why should a nation have control over its own borders and resources? Taxation should not imply representation.
ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
"No, seriously: 95% of the discussion in the referendum debates and on the street has been about short term issues that can be resolved one way or the other in the coming days and months (occasionally, months or single-digit years)." Talk about handwaving-I'd say that the currency system and EU membership are very big issues that deserve essays in and of themselves. I get he's a libertarian who doesn't like the Westphalian system (though why is it that conservatives and libertarians are seemingly the only people who give a rats ass about 17th century politics) but the actual issues of Scottish independence are more of an afterthought.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I don't think he's a libertarian. See, for instance, his take on Bitcoin.
  - ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
    I assumed since he was writing on PopeHat. My bad for making that assumption.
    - teraflop 12y ago
      I think you're confusing popehat.com with antipope.org. Charles Stross is a self-described socialist.
      - smsm42 12y ago
        Being a libertarian myself, I must admit I rather tend to agree with the socialist guy here. Smaller governments are better especially if they'd be socialist. If the government in the place where I live decides to build socialism, I'd like to be able to move before the toilet paper shortages start (I don't know what is special about toilet paper but socialists tend to have worst of luck with it [1]) and smaller is the government smaller is the distance I would have to move to regain access to this under-appreciated commodity. So besides all political reasons the most practical reason of minimizing the risk and the transaction costs if the worst does happen, smaller governments are better for me. [1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-27/venezuela-is-running-out-of-toilet-paper- http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-27/venezuela-i...
putzdown 12y ago
Abstraction is the napkin with which pundits wipe their sloppy chins. I don't know whether Scotland should secede from the UK or not, but I do know that this article doesn't hold enough substance to contribute to the question. There's simply too much handwaving. "Forget all the short term arguments...about whether we'll be economically better or worse off." Uh, no, I'd say that a substantive and long-term issue. "And to the extent that all of us who aren't in the 0.1% are "working class"—if you have to work to earn a living, you're working class, even if you're a brain surgeon or an accountant—the enemy of all of us?" Oh...kay so brain surgeons are now in the working class and that means nationalism is the enemy of everyone? Westphalia. Beige dictatorship. Cute. But please don't apply your favorite cookie cutters to a deep and complex issue and tell me they slice it just the way it needs to be sliced.
- Tycho 12y ago
  I think the point is that any calculation about whether we will be economically better off is inherently a short-term forecast. Nobody knows beyond that. I think the point about the ideal size of a state being closer to Scotland's population than to the UK's is a reasonable, fundamental contribution to the debate. It's not a 'cookie-cutter' argument. People are right to think in fundamental, philosophical terms. As the referendum draws closer I find myself paying less and less attention to short-term issues (which are mostly just quibbles over SNP policies, which really don't have much to do with independence - we could get independence then elect a different party) and thinking more along fundamental lines. One thing I'm sad not to have seen much discussion on is the constitution for an independent Scottish state. That to me is vitally important from a historical perspective.
  - cmdkeen 12y ago
    The debate about a constitution is both short term and vital, it is the most worrying of the SNP's policies. They both want a unicameral chamber and keep bandying around terms like "Sovreign will of the Scottish people" - which has worrying populist tones and a distinct lack of accountability. Seeing what they get up to in the Scottish Parliament with a majority on the committees that are supposed to hold the Executive to account makes me worry about what sort of government an independent Scotland would be starting with - and that is very hard to change, especially to introduce checks and balances. I don't know where the Scottish equivalent of the Bill of Rights would come from.
ddebernardy 12y ago
> the kind of nationalism that brought us the Great European War (...) is pretty much dead. Not sure which rock the author is living under... Has he ever heard of e.g. Golden Dawn? Seems like this kind of nationalism is still very much alive.
lorddoig 12y ago
Another Scot here (and a 'no' voter). Totally agree on almost everything except the 'short-term implications'. They have the potential to be both devastating and medium- to long-term. The currency issue, for example, is decidedly less trivial than either side have said. Specifics will depend on a lot of fights between Westminster and Holyrood that we won't get to see until after we've decided.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Agreed, after watching the last debate I was stunned by the extent to which Salmond tried to handwave this.
  - jeffbr13 12y ago
    The independence campaign has to hand-wave the issue, and can't outright declare that Scotland would almost certainly have a currency-union with the UK, because it's ultimately contingent on the UK government. If they did, the unionists/UK government could attempt to call their bluff by having UK politicians declare that a currency-union would never happen. It's doesn't cost the unionist politicians very much credibility and it undermines the independence campaign on that key issue, whether or not a currency union is a strong likelihood in the case of independence.
    - lorddoig 12y ago
      The truth is the UK government would be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't enter a currency union - unless they thought the Scottish economy was a real threat to the stability of the rest of the UK, or that having Salmond's cronies on the board at the Bank of England was politically unviable. The thing is though that in a currency union there's only so far the two economies can diverge before they have to adopt different currencies to maintain stability (Greece and the Euro is a fine example of the bad end of this stick) - which kind of defeats the purpose of being independent, to an extent.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  It feels to me (in the interests of transparency, I'm another no voter) that there needs to be a second referendum if it is a yes vote where we get to vote on exactly the settlement which is agreed.
aquanext 12y ago
I don't think you'd find very many people who would support breaking up the United States -- at least in the United States. There might be support for breaking some of the states in the US into smaller entities, particularly on the West Coast. But we have a pretty strong national culture, despite our local differences and our shared and troubled history.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  Culturally there is actually a great similarity between Scotland and much of England. One of the weaknesses of the No campaign in my view is that they've failed to draw on the massive similarities between Scotland the the industrial north of England. The differences between London and Scotland are significant, but the same differences exist between London and much of the North of England.
- jobu 12y ago
  Although the number of people involved is relatively low, there are some loud voices in various parts of the US that would like to secede. Hawaii - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement Texas - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_secession_movements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_secession_movements Alaska - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Independence_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Independence_Party
  - aquanext 12y ago
    There's a movement where I'm from that wants the Pacific Northwest states plus British Columbia to split off into a country called Cascadia. Barring some terrible disaster, I highly doubt that's ever going to happen in the near future. Maybe in some distant future where things are very different, but it's not realistic right now.
cmdkeen 12y ago
The Westphalian system exposed it's massive flaw not in 1914 but at the turn of the 19th century. The Westphalian states could not stop a rampaging Napoleon from conquering vast swathes of territory until marched 500,000 men without proper supplies into a Russian winter. Ukraine is an excellent example of the flaws of NATO - the system of small countries has to be plausible in their desire to stand up for each other. And the Baltic states have just cause to be very nervous these days - it is American backing that secures them, not the smaller NATO members who don't even meet their 2% of GDP spending pledge. The problem of the Scottish debate regarding international relations is that it is so focused on 2003 Iraq. It forgets the many good international engagements the UK has been a part of, and the potential future ones it could. Only powerful countries get to make mistakes on the magnitude of Iraq. An independent Scotland would not be able to look at something like Bosnia, Kosovo or Sierra Leone and be able to intervene if it wanted to. Alternatively see a certain Team America speech about various bits of the anatomy...
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
From the comments to the article: >"My broader point stands: there is a precedent for a constituent nation peacefully leaving the UK within the past century." // Has he forgotten that the EU started about 30 years after this? That seems the main reason that this situation is completely different - the geopolitical landscape has changed entirely, ignoring that seems rather strange. Currently we enjoy the CTA, so no obvious border controls with Eire. But UK + Eire are not in the Schengen area. EU have decided that all new countries will be in the Schengen area, Scotland thus will not be able to be in the CTA without the rUK (and Eire) effectively accepting the Schengen Agreement. Now I may have misjudged the current political temperature but with the rise of UKIP I can't see the rUK voting to relax immigration policy. If Scotland don't get in to Europe presumably rUK will be required to maintain border controls whether we acceded to the Schengen Agreement or not. Peacefully? He does at least mention the 2 year war of independence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence. There was a lot of violence besides, I'm sure the PLA/INLA/[provisional] IRA and the likes haven't been forgotten but those considerations probably aren't relevant _what with all the differences between the situations_. The lesson to learn from Eire is probably that if a unified region vote No then don't try and keep them as part of the Union. But that doesn't really work, if there's a land border it makes sense (Borders or D&G). Also for the islands, if Orkney and Shetland voted No, then there's far less chance that rest-of-Scotland will form a navy and start attacking them as their first action? The geography is different, the age is different, the politics are different, the modes of government are different, we're 100 years further away from feudalism for starters. It's worth making the comparison but concluding the situations are the same seems disingenuous at best.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  The EU may make an exception to Schengen as Scotland is in a unique position - it will claim (with some justification) that it is already in the EU (and outside Schengen) and the starting point for it should be the UK's current position. More interesting on the CTA is that it would involve signing up to many of the immigration policies rUK and Ireland have agreed to as part of that deal - that contradicts the more open immigration policy the SNP are selling as part of their pitch (which also includes the CTA).
jrapdx3 12y ago
If I were a Scot, I don't know how I would be able to decide which way to vote. The impulse toward autonomy collides with the value of "economies of scale". A small autonomous entity has to provide its needs for itself, or wind up negotiating with numerous other entities to assure having necessary resources, not likely a stable or reassuring situation to be in. It appears parallel to the episodic waves of industrial consolidation and fragmentation. Innovations start off as small local efforts which begin to "catch on", and the idea spreads. Over time small autonomous enterprises begin to merge because of efficiency pressure, until only a few giants remain. Eventually, innovations challenge the giants' dominance and the cycle renews. Political entities rise and fall, empires grow and decompose. It's not a static process, and it is very evident that some small nations survive and some large ones have not. For regions and nations the key must be finding the best dynamic balance between autonomy and the benefits of larger pools to provide for common interests. It is a very tough goal to accomplish. To take the USA as example, there are problems with state-to-state differences as it is. Health care is a currently prominent example. Arguably, my health needs don't change if I move to a different state, is it logical that health care should vary greatly one state to another? Should there be less or more autonomy in this regard? There are advocates on both sides, in any case, a delicate federal vs. state balance exists that's risky to disrupt. Large-system uniformity and efficiency are beneficial when it works, and miserable when it does not. Perhaps the best we'll do is, where possible, keep working to improve inter- and intra-regional communication, respect and cooperation. I know, that's hardly an answer to the question, but I don't think there is really any answer at all.

56 points by cstross 12y ago

Smaller nations sounds nice but in the intermediate term reality Scotland would become a minor province of the EU nation. It'd be trading Britain for something much bigger.

cstross 12y ago
We've already got that something (the EU). It's relatively benign. (Meanwhile, we've got an extra tier of government that insists on spending tax revenue raised in Scotland on stuff the Scottish people really don't want.)
- a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
  The EU is an ongoing and succeeding effort to replicate the United States Federal government in Europe. Scotland will eventually wind up having as much say as New Hampshire does in very important matters, such as control of its borders and agriculture policy.
  - nbouscal 12y ago
    That's an interesting choice of example state given New Hampshire's significant role in primary elections.
    - notahacker 12y ago
      The tendency of a few states (including a handful of very small ones) to get disproportionate attention at the federal level (and sometimes accompanying pork-barrel policies) is a bug rather than a feature of the US system.
      - smacktoward 12y ago
        There's nothing inherent in the American election system that requires New Hampshire and Iowa to get the attention they do. That's strictly an artifact of how the parties have chosen to schedule their primary calendars; New Hampshire and Iowa happened to be put first in the schedule, and people started paying more attention to them on the theory that winning these early primaries could start a snowball effect of support in the later ones. Either party could choose any time it wants to reshuffle their primary calendar and move some other states before NH and IA, or to hold all their primaries at once on the same day. There's just not much pressure on them to do so, so inertia keeps them where they are.
        maxerickson 12y ago
        The state parties set the dates. Of course the national parties can influence that, but there is no cohesive group mandating the dates. A not very talked about aspect of U.S. politics is how much influence peddling is possible at that level.
    - baddox 12y ago
      But they still can't make treaties with foreign nations, raise a military, mint coins, or any of several other things generally associated with sovereign nations.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    "control of its borders" I'm pleased to say that we don't seem to have quite the same obsession in Scotland with keeping immigrants out as a lot of people in the UK. In fact the SNP is rather keen on encouraging immigration. I'd far rather have the right to live and work anywhere in the EU than be trapped in the UK with Boris Johnson as PM running second hand UKIP policies.
    - a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
      Control of borders is practically the definition of a nation. If you don't have a say in who comes in, you aren't a nation.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        Control of borders is practically the definition of a nation in the sense of Westphalian Sovereignty, but arguing against that is Stross' whole point.
        a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        He never really makes a coherent point about how his smaller states will handle borders. Bringing up Westphalia in this particular context is silly because it's an eternal truth. If your people don't control access to the land, you will lose control of the land. This was true ten thousand years ago and it's true of Tibetans now.
        tptacek 12y ago
        An "eternal truth"? It's called Westphalian Sovereignty because it's the result of the eponymous historical event, prior to which extranational forces played a huge role in the internal politics of states.
        a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
        What point are you making? A chimp can understand this need to control land access. Saying "westphalia" over and over sheds no light. Control over immigration and land use was not invented by 17th century european diplomats if that's what you think. To the extent nations failed to control their borders in the past they were simply unfortunately weak nations.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    Note however that EU != Schengen zone. (Though there's more to control of borders than simply crossing borders without immigration checks.) In fact, UK border checks are relatively strict even for other EU citizens.
    - jsnell 12y ago
      The strictest UK border check I've gone through in a few years was putting my (EU) passport into an automated passport reader and looking into a camera for 5 seconds.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  The UK has a government that spends tax revenues raised in the UK on stuff people in [some parts of] the UK don't want. A new country called Scotland will it seems have a government that spends tax revenues raised in Scotland on stuff people in [some parts of] Scotland don't want. If you lived in a tax raising city state then your city would do the same thing. If you didn't want an extra tier of government then why vote for one? We could have saved £414 million in one swoop on that.
  - wisty 12y ago
    The main problem is, revenue and spending are rarely done by the same people. The UK can blame the Scottish Parliament on reckless spending, and be forced to raise taxes. A local government can recklessly spend (or neglect infrastructure), and force the Scottish to bail them out. Should a state government fight to create jobs (even if it annoys special interest groups), or just rely on welfare from the federal government? If there's a government that is in charge of major infrastructure, health, education, social welfare, and taxes, then there's far less buck passing. States spend the big bucks, so states should be responsible for raising the big bucks. The other problem is that people only care about the highest level of government. Probably because it's more efficient for news organisations to only report on the Federal level (since the story will be more widely read). Look at the US. It seems that virtually everything gets blamed on Obama or the House, despite the fact that the real decisions are generally done at the state level, with far less scrutiny, because it's cheaper for the newspapers to just send a single correspondent to Washington, and report on what's going on there. I don't even know the current Premier (governor, in US terms) of my state. Not since a "memory lapse" in front of a corruption inquiry forced the last one out a few months ago, after the previous party lost a string of premiers also due to corruption - I just can't keep up. So there's two problems - no-one cares about anything other than the top level of politics (since the papers are all national now, and it's more efficient to just look at what happens at the Federal level), and there's too much buck passing between the level of government that has the money, and the level of government that spends it.
  - smsm42 12y ago
    One could argue that the smaller the government is and the more local the taxes are, less is the percentage spent on the things inhabitants of this locality do not want. Example: if you raise taxes on city level, then spending decisions are influenced only by people living in your city, and the chance it would be spent on building an airport in the next county that nobody flies from, to suit some politician, are much less. OTOH, if all the taxes are collected by a huge central government, the chances that you will disagree with a lot of its spending are much higher. Of course, the hybrid model is possible - with only taxes that are needed specifically for big things - like national defense - collected on hight level, and taxes needed for local things - like police, roads, schools, etc. - collected on the lower levels. That's how the federalism works.
baddox 12y ago
As opposed to being part of the UK, which is part of the EU nation?
- sentenza 12y ago
  Not for long. As a continental European, I'd be quite surprised if the UK voted to stay in the EU in the 2017 referendum. There is just so much hatred for the EU coming out of the UK that by now, its leaving almost seems a forgone conclusion.
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    As a Brit (English, living in Scotland), I'd say that there is a way to go before that and would make two points: 1) there is only one party promising that referendum and they're behind in the polls 2) current polls say that we'd vote to stay (http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/06/17/eu-referendum-record-lead/ http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/06/17/eu-referendum-record-lea...), even before any renegotiation. There are other polls which have said otherwise but YouGov provide an on-going tracker which I think shows that, while the level of support has changed, broadly we still support EU membership. Obviously all very uncertain (and until a couple of weeks ago polls were sure Scotland would stay in the UK) but I'd say that you shouldn't confuse the volume of some of the negative views on Europe with them being a consensus - most people are quietly happy with the status quo.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Smaller nations sounds nice but in the intermediate term reality Scotland would become a minor province of the EU nation. If it's admitted at all, which is far from certain.
- SideburnsOfDoom 12y ago
  > If it's admitted (to the EU) at all, which is far from certain. I don't see why it would not be admitted. The EU is not in the habit of turning down that kind of country: wealthy, peaceful, of Christian heritage and adjoining several EU countries. And if you want to play that game, it's not certain that England will remain in the EU. An independent Scotland could well end up the only part of Britain left in the EU. Yes that would be a crashingly stupid thing for Britain to collectively do. But it's not impossible.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I don't see why it would not be admitted. Inability to come to mutually agreeable terms -- Scotlands wants (1) essentially automatic admission without the normal new state process, and (2) to keep the UK's special exemption for using the sterling, and (3) to get part of the UK's rebates. AFAICT, much of the rest of the EU is opposed to all three of those. Spain is particularly opposed to the first (and possibly to Scottish admission at all), because an independent Scotland getting into the EU, especially on fast-track process, is seen as encouraging Catalonian independence. > The EU is not in the habit of turning down that kind of country: wealthy, peaceful, of Christian heritage and adjoining several EU countries. First, I think you are considering the wrong category: the category of interest is "states having recently broken away from existing EU member-states", particularly as the UK isn't the only EU member with regions that have some pro-independence sentiments, and admitting such a breakaway state is something that states that have their own aspiring breakaway regions are likely to see as providing encouragement to those breakaway regions. Also, an independent Scotland would be adjoining exactly one other country (the UK), and one of the reasons that seems to keep being cited for it leaving is that, even with Scotland still in the UK and exerting pro-EU pressure, the future of the UK in the EU is locally considered less than certain, so I'm not sure where you get that "adjoining several EU countries" is a fair description. > And if you want to play that game, it's not certain that England will remain in the EU. Of course its not; I don't dispute that at all.

drpgq 12y ago

"The population of the American Colonies in 1790 is estimated at roughly 2.7 million; the United States today has over 300 million inhabitants. In 1780 England and Wales had around 7.5 million inhabitants" I didn't know that ratio between the England and Wales population versus the American colonies was that small at that time. I would have thought it would have been bigger.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Perhaps a more useful metric would have been urban v rural populations - but even then Watts engine had only been around for fifteen years (1776 ironically).
adventured 12y ago
Not sure where they got that. The 1790 census says 3.893 million, with 694,000 being slaves. (Jefferson and Washington both believed the true figure to be higher) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_Census http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_Census

junto 12y ago

I like the Swiss 'canton' concept, where each canton is fairly autonomous, with its own constitution and courts. These cantons were previously completely separate states, ironically formed as part of the Treaty of Westphalia: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland I'd like to hear any Swiss opinions on this system, since they have to live in it, but as an outsider I've always considered this local governance, with limited national state powers to be attractive. However, I'm not sure whether this kind of model is applicable everywhere. I'm guessing there are some historical, geographical, cultural and/or economic reasons for its success in Switzerland compared to other countries.

heydenberk 12y ago
One need look no further than the US to see the folly of a weak federal system.
- joesmo 12y ago
  IMO, the federal government is much too strong in the US and consistently gaining strength, especially in the last eighty to ninety years. Why do you say it's a weak federal system? I can't think of anything a national government should (and shouldn't) do that it does not have the power to do.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Why do you say it's a weak federal system? The US can show the problems of a weak federal system without the current US government being a weak federal system: the system under the Articles of Confederation was a very weak federal system; the system under the Constitution prior to the Civil War was a weak federal system. Both the issues that the former produced that resulted in the Constitutional Convention and the latter system's end in the Civil War can be viewed as illustrating problems of a weak federal system.
    - smacktoward 12y ago

sparkzilla 12y ago

This guy dresses up his reasons in pseudo-intellectual guff. If we follow his reasoning reductio ad absurdum what would be the size of the smallest state he'd like? One with 15 million people? One with 5 million? One with one person? In reality he just doesn't like the English, specifically English conservatives. The Scots claim they don't like being ruled by people they didn't vote for. But they were happy to vote for Labor for 15 years before this Tory government. Part of a mature society is that you understand that around half of the time you don't get who you vote for. I'm no great fan of Paul Krugman but he correctly points out that the new Socialist State of Scotland would be set adrift in a world of capital flows it cannot hope to control. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/opinion/paul-krugman-scots-what-the-heck.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/opinion/paul-krugman-scots... David Cameron should never have let it go this far. A federal system would have made far more sense, and not divided Scotland's people and broken a successful union.

kryptiskt 12y ago

I dislike small countries, I felt claustrophobic back when Sweden wasn't a member of the EU and a move abroad would need to be planned many months in advance with reams of paperwork. Problems were smaller scale back when we had those itsy-bitsy countries that Stross is so romantic about. Small countries today only breeds parochialism (not in my backyard!) and cultural backwardness. And EU isn't an escape valve from that. Multiply the number of countries in the EU by three and watch it grind to a halt. I wouldn't mind a nordic union swallowing all the nordic states and move away from the romantic idea of a state for every nation.

adventured 12y ago
New Zealand, Hong Kong (pre 1997), and Singapore, aren't really what I'd call culturally backwards. They may not be on the cutting edge culturally, but they're not backwards. And on the flip side, there are plenty of large countries that are narrow minded and backwards in every respect. I'd argue most countries in the world today are either slightly or extremely backwards and mostly tend to their own sphere of matters. There are perhaps a mere three dozen countries for which such isn't true. India and China have 2.4 billion people, I'd argue about 2/3 of those people live culturally backwards (what a cultural snob from NY, Paris, London etc might define as such anyway) and narrowly focused lives. Most of those people have very little real knowledge or awareness of the greater international world. Their problems, knowledge, experiences and lives in general are all extremely local. I struggle to see that parochialism and cultural backwardness is in any way particular to size.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  If you slice and dice say the UK into smaller pieces, do you think London are gonna help Tyneside when the latter is hit by economic trouble? That's the parochialism that results from small countries, an endless accounting of small favors granted just because a border is put up and some people are defined as strangers.
mcantelon 12y ago
>the romantic idea of a state for every nation Yes, why should a nation have control over its own borders and resources? Taxation should not imply representation.

ZanyProgrammer 12y ago

"No, seriously: 95% of the discussion in the referendum debates and on the street has been about short term issues that can be resolved one way or the other in the coming days and months (occasionally, months or single-digit years)." Talk about handwaving-I'd say that the currency system and EU membership are very big issues that deserve essays in and of themselves. I get he's a libertarian who doesn't like the Westphalian system (though why is it that conservatives and libertarians are seemingly the only people who give a rats ass about 17th century politics) but the actual issues of Scottish independence are more of an afterthought.

tptacek 12y ago
I don't think he's a libertarian. See, for instance, his take on Bitcoin.
- ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
  I assumed since he was writing on PopeHat. My bad for making that assumption.
  - teraflop 12y ago
    I think you're confusing popehat.com with antipope.org. Charles Stross is a self-described socialist.
    - smsm42 12y ago
      Being a libertarian myself, I must admit I rather tend to agree with the socialist guy here. Smaller governments are better especially if they'd be socialist. If the government in the place where I live decides to build socialism, I'd like to be able to move before the toilet paper shortages start (I don't know what is special about toilet paper but socialists tend to have worst of luck with it [1]) and smaller is the government smaller is the distance I would have to move to regain access to this under-appreciated commodity. So besides all political reasons the most practical reason of minimizing the risk and the transaction costs if the worst does happen, smaller governments are better for me. [1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-27/venezuela-is-running-out-of-toilet-paper- http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-27/venezuela-i...

putzdown 12y ago

Abstraction is the napkin with which pundits wipe their sloppy chins. I don't know whether Scotland should secede from the UK or not, but I do know that this article doesn't hold enough substance to contribute to the question. There's simply too much handwaving. "Forget all the short term arguments...about whether we'll be economically better or worse off." Uh, no, I'd say that a substantive and long-term issue. "And to the extent that all of us who aren't in the 0.1% are "working class"—if you have to work to earn a living, you're working class, even if you're a brain surgeon or an accountant—the enemy of all of us?" Oh...kay so brain surgeons are now in the working class and that means nationalism is the enemy of everyone? Westphalia. Beige dictatorship. Cute. But please don't apply your favorite cookie cutters to a deep and complex issue and tell me they slice it just the way it needs to be sliced.

Tycho 12y ago
I think the point is that any calculation about whether we will be economically better off is inherently a short-term forecast. Nobody knows beyond that. I think the point about the ideal size of a state being closer to Scotland's population than to the UK's is a reasonable, fundamental contribution to the debate. It's not a 'cookie-cutter' argument. People are right to think in fundamental, philosophical terms. As the referendum draws closer I find myself paying less and less attention to short-term issues (which are mostly just quibbles over SNP policies, which really don't have much to do with independence - we could get independence then elect a different party) and thinking more along fundamental lines. One thing I'm sad not to have seen much discussion on is the constitution for an independent Scottish state. That to me is vitally important from a historical perspective.
- cmdkeen 12y ago
  The debate about a constitution is both short term and vital, it is the most worrying of the SNP's policies. They both want a unicameral chamber and keep bandying around terms like "Sovreign will of the Scottish people" - which has worrying populist tones and a distinct lack of accountability. Seeing what they get up to in the Scottish Parliament with a majority on the committees that are supposed to hold the Executive to account makes me worry about what sort of government an independent Scotland would be starting with - and that is very hard to change, especially to introduce checks and balances. I don't know where the Scottish equivalent of the Bill of Rights would come from.

ddebernardy 12y ago

> the kind of nationalism that brought us the Great European War (...) is pretty much dead. Not sure which rock the author is living under... Has he ever heard of e.g. Golden Dawn? Seems like this kind of nationalism is still very much alive.

lorddoig 12y ago

Another Scot here (and a 'no' voter). Totally agree on almost everything except the 'short-term implications'. They have the potential to be both devastating and medium- to long-term. The currency issue, for example, is decidedly less trivial than either side have said. Specifics will depend on a lot of fights between Westminster and Holyrood that we won't get to see until after we've decided.

jiggy2011 12y ago
Agreed, after watching the last debate I was stunned by the extent to which Salmond tried to handwave this.
- jeffbr13 12y ago
  The independence campaign has to hand-wave the issue, and can't outright declare that Scotland would almost certainly have a currency-union with the UK, because it's ultimately contingent on the UK government. If they did, the unionists/UK government could attempt to call their bluff by having UK politicians declare that a currency-union would never happen. It's doesn't cost the unionist politicians very much credibility and it undermines the independence campaign on that key issue, whether or not a currency union is a strong likelihood in the case of independence.
  - lorddoig 12y ago
    The truth is the UK government would be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't enter a currency union - unless they thought the Scottish economy was a real threat to the stability of the rest of the UK, or that having Salmond's cronies on the board at the Bank of England was politically unviable. The thing is though that in a currency union there's only so far the two economies can diverge before they have to adopt different currencies to maintain stability (Greece and the Euro is a fine example of the bad end of this stick) - which kind of defeats the purpose of being independent, to an extent.
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
It feels to me (in the interests of transparency, I'm another no voter) that there needs to be a second referendum if it is a yes vote where we get to vote on exactly the settlement which is agreed.

aquanext 12y ago

I don't think you'd find very many people who would support breaking up the United States -- at least in the United States. There might be support for breaking some of the states in the US into smaller entities, particularly on the West Coast. But we have a pretty strong national culture, despite our local differences and our shared and troubled history.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
Culturally there is actually a great similarity between Scotland and much of England. One of the weaknesses of the No campaign in my view is that they've failed to draw on the massive similarities between Scotland the the industrial north of England. The differences between London and Scotland are significant, but the same differences exist between London and much of the North of England.
jobu 12y ago
Although the number of people involved is relatively low, there are some loud voices in various parts of the US that would like to secede. Hawaii - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement Texas - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_secession_movements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_secession_movements Alaska - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Independence_Party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Independence_Party
- aquanext 12y ago
  There's a movement where I'm from that wants the Pacific Northwest states plus British Columbia to split off into a country called Cascadia. Barring some terrible disaster, I highly doubt that's ever going to happen in the near future. Maybe in some distant future where things are very different, but it's not realistic right now.

cmdkeen 12y ago

The Westphalian system exposed it's massive flaw not in 1914 but at the turn of the 19th century. The Westphalian states could not stop a rampaging Napoleon from conquering vast swathes of territory until marched 500,000 men without proper supplies into a Russian winter. Ukraine is an excellent example of the flaws of NATO - the system of small countries has to be plausible in their desire to stand up for each other. And the Baltic states have just cause to be very nervous these days - it is American backing that secures them, not the smaller NATO members who don't even meet their 2% of GDP spending pledge. The problem of the Scottish debate regarding international relations is that it is so focused on 2003 Iraq. It forgets the many good international engagements the UK has been a part of, and the potential future ones it could. Only powerful countries get to make mistakes on the magnitude of Iraq. An independent Scotland would not be able to look at something like Bosnia, Kosovo or Sierra Leone and be able to intervene if it wanted to. Alternatively see a certain Team America speech about various bits of the anatomy...

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

From the comments to the article: >"My broader point stands: there is a precedent for a constituent nation peacefully leaving the UK within the past century." // Has he forgotten that the EU started about 30 years after this? That seems the main reason that this situation is completely different - the geopolitical landscape has changed entirely, ignoring that seems rather strange. Currently we enjoy the CTA, so no obvious border controls with Eire. But UK + Eire are not in the Schengen area. EU have decided that all new countries will be in the Schengen area, Scotland thus will not be able to be in the CTA without the rUK (and Eire) effectively accepting the Schengen Agreement. Now I may have misjudged the current political temperature but with the rise of UKIP I can't see the rUK voting to relax immigration policy. If Scotland don't get in to Europe presumably rUK will be required to maintain border controls whether we acceded to the Schengen Agreement or not. Peacefully? He does at least mention the 2 year war of independence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_War_of_Independence. There was a lot of violence besides, I'm sure the PLA/INLA/[provisional] IRA and the likes haven't been forgotten but those considerations probably aren't relevant _what with all the differences between the situations_. The lesson to learn from Eire is probably that if a unified region vote No then don't try and keep them as part of the Union. But that doesn't really work, if there's a land border it makes sense (Borders or D&G). Also for the islands, if Orkney and Shetland voted No, then there's far less chance that rest-of-Scotland will form a navy and start attacking them as their first action? The geography is different, the age is different, the politics are different, the modes of government are different, we're 100 years further away from feudalism for starters. It's worth making the comparison but concluding the situations are the same seems disingenuous at best.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
The EU may make an exception to Schengen as Scotland is in a unique position - it will claim (with some justification) that it is already in the EU (and outside Schengen) and the starting point for it should be the UK's current position. More interesting on the CTA is that it would involve signing up to many of the immigration policies rUK and Ireland have agreed to as part of that deal - that contradicts the more open immigration policy the SNP are selling as part of their pitch (which also includes the CTA).

jrapdx3 12y ago

If I were a Scot, I don't know how I would be able to decide which way to vote. The impulse toward autonomy collides with the value of "economies of scale". A small autonomous entity has to provide its needs for itself, or wind up negotiating with numerous other entities to assure having necessary resources, not likely a stable or reassuring situation to be in. It appears parallel to the episodic waves of industrial consolidation and fragmentation. Innovations start off as small local efforts which begin to "catch on", and the idea spreads. Over time small autonomous enterprises begin to merge because of efficiency pressure, until only a few giants remain. Eventually, innovations challenge the giants' dominance and the cycle renews. Political entities rise and fall, empires grow and decompose. It's not a static process, and it is very evident that some small nations survive and some large ones have not. For regions and nations the key must be finding the best dynamic balance between autonomy and the benefits of larger pools to provide for common interests. It is a very tough goal to accomplish. To take the USA as example, there are problems with state-to-state differences as it is. Health care is a currently prominent example. Arguably, my health needs don't change if I move to a different state, is it logical that health care should vary greatly one state to another? Should there be less or more autonomy in this regard? There are advocates on both sides, in any case, a delicate federal vs. state balance exists that's risky to disrupt. Large-system uniformity and efficiency are beneficial when it works, and miserable when it does not. Perhaps the best we'll do is, where possible, keep working to improve inter- and intra-regional communication, respect and cooperation. I know, that's hardly an answer to the question, but I don't think there is really any answer at all.