4 ms·

What is a country? I'll just keep on turning it around - why would some folks in New York, for instance, decide for people living in Alabama, or Wyoming?

• mtviewdave 12y ago
  >What is a country? Google "Westphalian Sovereignty" and go from there.
  • jarek 12y ago
    That just goes down the rabbit hole. What is a nation state? What is a nation? Is Scotland a country? Is Wales?
    • rmc 12y ago
      Is Germany? Is the UK?
      • jarek 12y ago
        The point behind the Scotland question is if UK can have some control over Scotland with Scotland remaining a country, even without being fully sovereign from the UK, why doesn't the same apply to members of other higher-level states like EU? One can make arguments like "why would some folks in England, for instance, decide for people living in Scotland, or Northern Ireland?" but where do you draw the line? Wales has less autonomy than Scotland but is still a "country" on Wikipedia, are they oppressed? Inverness has social policy dictated from the Lowlands, is it not a true democracy then? `davidw in the next comment thread over isn't too happy with the amount of power Wyoming has over California, can it work in the long run? Or is it only EU federation that HN will complain about?
• flatdeviant 12y ago
  Yet nobody in Alabama wants to secede. A significant chunk of European citizens are against the European Union. Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one.
  • thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Haha. You haven't ever been to Alabama, I take it? In 2012 they got 32000 people to sign a petition in favor of secession.
  • jarek 12y ago
    > Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one. Move a city boy from New Jersey to Alaska or deep Lousiana and see how much of a stranger he ends up being, even if the language is technically the same.
• davidw 12y ago
  The total population of Wyoming is of course lower than the city/county of San Francisco, which means that in reality, things are more biased towards Wyoming deciding for Californians, because they still get their two senators and one representative despite the small population.