Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

beta.theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 116 posts

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#91

Post by petepete »

SticksAndBreaks wrote: post #89

It seems Diamond Age is not so far away by now. Emerging are the phyles, tribes of ideas, some social democratic, some autocratic. Welcome to europe candaduu. Also, you can loose your nation and citizenship, if you turn to other ideas. Become a communist and you become a north korean or venezuelian, become a djihadi and you are a ISIL or Saudi Arabia citizen. Be a bleeding heart bug liberal- and you are a Californian…

> Be a bleeding heart bug liberal- and you are a Californian or Israeli

What, Israel is considered liberal these days?

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#92

Post by beloch »

mthoms wrote: post #76
beloch wrote: post #33

Just to play the devil's advocate here... Such a move would pose some pretty big problems for Canada. 1. If Scotland were a Canadian province, they'd likely be a "have not" province and equalization payments from other provinces would go to Scotland. Good for Scotland, but this would be a drain on the rest of Canada. 2. If Scotland seceded from the UK and joined Canada, that would be one heckuva precedent for Quebec,…

1. Scotland's economy would actually be ranked 4th (only slightly smaller than Alberta) if it were a province in Canada. So it definitely wouldn't be a "have not" province. 2. I'd argue that Scotland joining Canada would present a stronger argument for Quebec remaining rather than leaving. 3. See (1) 4. This is an interesting question but between Brexit and losing Scotland I don't think they'd be in a very strong pos…

1. It's per capita income that determines how equalization payments are made. Alberta has a per capita GDP of $78K while Scotland's is $43K (both according to wikipedia). Total size of the economy is not the determining factor here. Equalization payments are made to equalize the standard of living between provinces, not the total size of their economies.

2. As I said, how Scotland secedes and how the U.K. chooses to respond would set precedents that would remove many of the scary uncertainties around secession for Quebec. It could make it more appealing. Separatist sentiment is currently low, but ebbs and wanes.

6. True. Not impossible, just difficult.

7. Cheese from Quebec vs cheese from France: Which will be cheaper and more competitive in Scotland? Travel between Scotland and Canada will still be a lot more expensive than travel between Scotland and Europe too. It's actually far cheaper and faster to travel from Scotland to France (or even most of Russia) than from B.C. to Newfoundland at present. As for access to the U.S. market, who knows what NAFTA is going to look like in a couple years? U.S. trade protectionism is ramping up in a serious way right now.

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#93

Post by Normal_gaussian »

> The Scots aren't happy with the rest of Britain. They aren't happy politically with Westminster's shift to the right.

There is this general perception that "the Scottish people" want to leave the UK and that "the Scottish people" didn't want Brexit. This is simply not true.

If we look at the Brexit results [1] we can see that Scotland voted 38% in favour of leaving the EU - yes a majority voted to stay however 3/5 is nowhere near enough to claim the dissenters are irrelevant.

Similarly the referendum on Scottish Independence was a vote with two clear and highly relevant sides [2].

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/scotland-decides/results

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#94

Post by SticksAndBreaks »

petepete wrote: post #91
SticksAndBreaks wrote: post #89

It seems Diamond Age is not so far away by now. Emerging are the phyles, tribes of ideas, some social democratic, some autocratic. Welcome to europe candaduu. Also, you can loose your nation and citizenship, if you turn to other ideas. Become a communist and you become a north korean or venezuelian, become a djihadi and you are a ISIL or Saudi Arabia citizen. Be a bleeding heart bug liberal- and you are a Californian…

> Be a bleeding heart bug liberal- and you are a Californian or Israeli What, Israel is considered liberal these days?

By global standards - and ignoring there own little sub-phyle of amish-jews.

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#95

Post by Turing_Machine »

bsder wrote: post #38
camus2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calexit will of course never happen. Any secession attempt would automatically lead to yet another civil war. California would be crushed.

> California would be crushed. If California gets crushed, the rest of the country will starve . And you really think that a military that couldn't pacify a city with a bunch of camel jockeys carrying AK-47's could pacify Compton let alone something the size of Los Angeles or San Francisco? Good luck with that. Calexit won't happen because Californians really don't want it. We're a pretty level-headed bunch even when…

"If California gets crushed, the rest of the country will starve."

No, it wouldn't.

You are confusing high-valued luxury foods (e.g., artichokes, almonds, and arugula) with basic calorie sources (e.g., corn and wheat). The latter category is the one that makes the difference when it comes to starvation.

California produces only a very small percentage of our calories. No one is going to starve to death if they can't get fresh arugula in January.

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#96

Post by Turing_Machine »

geofft wrote: post #10
labster wrote: post #7

With the prospect of Calexit, I would definitely consider having California join Canada. Preexisting trade deals, membership in NATO and NAFTA, and a country used to bilingual culture would all be a great fit for us.

Calexit scares me because it's effectively abandoning the country; California can survive much more than the rest of the country can. It might be unfair to place that burden on California, sure, but it seem indisputable that leaving would destabilize the remaining United States in many ways - which won't be good for either Californians or anyone else. What's to stop New York, for instance, from also leaving once it r…

"California can survive much more than the rest of the country can."

What are they planning to use for water?

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#97

Post by Turing_Machine »

bsder wrote: post #66
ryanx435 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps and search engines don't win wars

An army travels on it's stomach. http://www.westernfarmpress.com/tree-nuts/what-happens-if-us... And, that oh-so-important-to-the-rest-of-the-country-farming, is less than 5% of California's GDP. California's manufacturing sector is enormous. Good luck repairing your planes without California. And medicine? Oh, yeah, that biotech manufacturing goes bye bye. etc. Our current highly interconnected economies rely on pea…

"An army travels on it's stomach."

True, but that stomach is full of wheat and corn, not celery and kiwi fruit.

"Good luck repairing your planes without California. "

Good luck being able to get a glass of water without the rest of the country. I wonder where trouble would develop first?

Plus, what makes you think that the agricultural counties are going to join your utopia in the first place? Almost all of them voted heavily for Trump.

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#98

Post by dsr_ »

themgt wrote: post #88
CalRobert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the US a country may make sense, but I increasingly don't feel it's a nation. I feel more foreign in Missouri than in Ireland. I feel no more kinship or commonality with people from the US than from liberal western democracies (Canada, most of Europe, etc). Also, California is arguably occupied. It is ruled by a federal government that lost an election by any reasonable measure. It lacks the right to secede d…

> It is ruled by a federal government that lost an election by any reasonable measure The electoral college system our country has used for nearly 250 years is no longer a "reasonable measure" of who won the election?

It is consistent to say that it never was; it just happened to usually align with the popular vote.

Suppose there was a little Eastern European country where the election procedures were the same as the USA's. We would certainly criticize them every time the popular vote said A and the weird political procedure said B and got to overrule the popular vote.

In fact, if they had oil or it were otherwise advantageous, we would likely invade, fracture them into smaller countries more amenable to our interests, and then abandon them.

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#99

Post by CalRobert »

themgt wrote: post #88
CalRobert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the US a country may make sense, but I increasingly don't feel it's a nation. I feel more foreign in Missouri than in Ireland. I feel no more kinship or commonality with people from the US than from liberal western democracies (Canada, most of Europe, etc). Also, California is arguably occupied. It is ruled by a federal government that lost an election by any reasonable measure. It lacks the right to secede d…

> It is ruled by a federal government that lost an election by any reasonable measure The electoral college system our country has used for nearly 250 years is no longer a "reasonable measure" of who won the election?

Correct. It never really was, but as the country's polarization increases it becomes less and less a reflection of the people's will. If three quarters of the country can vote for you and the other candidate _still_ wins, that's a deeply flawed system. (discussion at http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=569298)

Until this century we mostly just got lucky, with only two misalignments in the 19th century.

We essentially have a rotten borough problem, though few want to acknowledge it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs

Ideally we'd go to preference-based voting, but just eliminating "let's make votes from rural areas vastly more important" as a voting system would be a huge start.

Re: It’s time for Scotland to find a new home in Canada

#100

Post by throwaway2048 »

saurik wrote: post #81
pebers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Queen is the head of state of Canada as well, so that situation wouldn't change: "Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada

Wow, and apparently she is also the Queen of Australia and New Zealand?!? Regardless: Scotland is usually compared at the level of Quebec, not Canada, and there are numerous things that they do not have control over, particularly and most relevantly including immigration. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15037874.Immigration_powe...

Not that its very relevant to your point, but quebec does have some measure of control over immigration.
Post reply on HN