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Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

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Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#61

Post by cafard »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #49
UncleOxidant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It varies a lot. I spent some growing up years in Southern Oregon and there definitely was a strong evangelical, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion etc. contingent in the town where I was. Lots of Birchers & KKK types as well. This was in the 70s and while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking, it seems like we had a lot of similar kinds of conspiracies running rampant in small southern Oregon towns ba…

I mean Oregon was founded as a white only state it's right in there constitution. > No free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes a…

There were exclusion laws in a fair bit of the Midwest back in the day. I don't know that those states are any more or any less racist than the rest of the US.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#62

Post by brobdingnagians »

jerf wrote: post #28

One of the things I periodically mentally noodle with is, what would the world look like if it was a lot easier for units to choose what larger units they would aggregate into? Like, cities choosing a county, counties choosing a state, states choosing their country, etc. I originally was noodling with this in the context of a space civilization, where there is no equivalent of "solid ground", everything's always movi…

There is currently a process of devolution in the world, including Scotland, Catalonia, basically the entire former British empire, former Soviet states, and other places in the world. As areas become more peaceful, quite a few places start the see opportunities for governing themselves, and the benefits of creating the laws which directly impact their lives. Some countries technically have the right of secession codified in their laws [1].

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, under secession, notes [2]: " As the fear of forcible annexation diminishes and trade barriers fall, smaller states become feasible, and independent statehood looks more feasible for regions within states." They then continue, "Second, in roughly the same time period, the idea that there is a strong case for some form of self-government for groups presently contained within states has gained ground."

Really, the only major benefit of large states is in common military protection; another one would be facilitating economic trade, but that can be taken care of by creating economic zones, like what the EU started as, with sovereign members participating by means of standard treaties. Even military defense could be done by common consent. In Europe, quite a few countries with military ambitions were stopped by coalitions of countries.

If a region has a peaceful and prosperous culture with a defensible geography, then it tends to be more advantageous to self-govern in a small region.

With the unlimited right of secession, the main question is, if someone doesn't _want_ to be part of a country, why should they be _forced_ to be part of that country? You are born into a country, nominally without choice, but that doesn't mean that you should be required to assent to the laws. Of course, most of the time the benefits outweigh the problems, but if they don't, then it is simply coercion to make someone do something that isn't good for them. That's abusive.

[1] https://www.nationalia.info/new/10936/ten-countries-that-gra...

[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/secession/

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#63

Post by sdenton4 »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #24
UncleOxidant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It varies a lot. I spent some growing up years in Southern Oregon and there definitely was a strong evangelical, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion etc. contingent in the town where I was. Lots of Birchers & KKK types as well. This was in the 70s and while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking, it seems like we had a lot of similar kinds of conspiracies running rampant in small southern Oregon towns ba…

I recently moved from Eagle Point so probably not too far away from where you were. It's certainly a strange and diverse set of people. Everything from weed growers to hippies to evangelicals to conspiracy nuts and everything in between. Most of the people I met there generally distrusted the government and couldn't care less about what you did on your own land.

Wandering around the back roads near Cave Junction, I rode past a barn with a giant mural advocating world peace and love for all. The fence around the barn was plastered with 'trespassers will be shot' signs. It is, indeed, it's own world...

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#64

Post by jpttsn »

mjevans wrote: post #35

Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both in the physica…

What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong?

Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it’s possible to show where every tax dollar went.

Would you still favor this trnsparency if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#65

Post by UncleOxidant »

medium_burrito wrote: post #36
UncleOxidant wrote: post #5

As an Oregonian not living in one of those sparsely-populated counties that voted for secession, I wonder why the folks who want to be part of Idaho don't just vote with their feet and move there? There's no border wall keeping them in Oregon. These votes are just symbolic and won't get them to their Idaho paradise near as quickly as a U-Haul could.

Idaho has become very expensive in the last few years. It's basically Western Wyoming, but for poors.

More expensive than Oregon? What parts of Idaho? It's a big state with lots of empty space hard to imagine that it's all expensive.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#66

Post by bilbo0s »

krapp wrote: post #50
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if everyone agrees to prevent conquering-by-force, why wouldn't it work?

Humans don't work that way. We always create hierarchies of power and control, it's innate to our primate nature.

Put more simply, no one would agree to the idealistic utopian-like rule of "no conquering".

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#67

Post by jerf »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #58
jerf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains the means to conquer by force." Obviously, it hasn't been historically. But an interesting long-term trend (across the last few centuries) is that "conquest by force" is becoming less and less effective. In the ancient world, "conquest by force" meant you got to take their land, take their food, take their livestock, and just in general take all their stuff t…

It might be worth rethinking your notions of 'long term'. Typically, there's a kind of time dilation where things that have happened recently seem both historically normal and of a longer duration than they really are.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. One of my viewpoints here is the difference between the ancient world, prior to 500AD or so, and today... seems like a long enough baseline to me....

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#68

Post by paxys »

mjevans wrote: post #35

Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both in the physica…

The biggest driving factor is overexposure to news & social media which convinces otherwise well-off and content people that the "other side" is out to destroy their lives, so they must do something about it.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#69

Post by omegaworks »

pcan77 wrote: post #4

Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?

They would be abandoning some incredible watersheds[1] if they did. That's probably the point of this whole project, to put a huge chunk of western water resources under the control of a single state amenable to white supremacists[2].

1. https://geology.com/lakes-rivers-water/oregon.shtml

2. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924461164/are-paramilitary-ex...

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#70

Post by specialist »

Those voters will be surprised by Idaho's tax burden. Higher than OR and WA, closer to national norms. Very reasonable.

I've been pitching the idea of an astroturf (fake) tax revolt campaign in Eastern WA, demanding the commies in Olympia adopt a proper conservative tax regime like Idaho's. IIRC, WA State's yearly tax revenue would then be $3b greater.

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