Knights & Knaves Alehouse

G: "My dearest political hope is for the U. S. federal government to simply and peacefully cease to exist"

This might be a dumb question...but what would happen (in theory)? I mean, what negative things would occur? I suppose some states would trash their state Constitutions (you'd just move), but what else? What function of the federal government could we simply NOT live without? I'm not proposing loose the president and congress, just not give them a dime or any real power, sorta like the English royalty (figure heads). We'd probably need to have some sort of united military (or we'd otherwise hand the field over to our enemies).

AxeMental wrote:G: "My dearest political hope is for the U. S. federal government to simply and peacefully cease to exist"

This might be a dumb question...but what would happen (in theory)? I mean, what negative things would occur?

For perspective, keep firmly in mind that even the countries of the former Soviet Union (of all places!) could and did peacefully go from being a vast empire to being 15 different countries. And that was almost 20 years ago.

If the U. S. federal government ceased to exist, I think that very few bad things would happen, and all the bad things would be short-term.

The vast majority of government "services" (such as they are) are provided by state and local governments. The average Joe in the streets has only two things provided for him by the fed gov: the post office, and the mint.

Consider that people don't fly in from Washington D. C. each morning to staff your local post office. It's staffed locally. I think the mail service would simply be taken over relatively smoothly by each of the 50 state governments.

The mint is found in Denver, Colorado and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Again, the mints are staffed locally. I think the 50 state governments would simply contract for Colorado and Pennsylvania to continue (in the short-term, anyway) to mint money for all 50 states. I think, however, that this would be only temporary. I suspect that eventually each state would start to mint its own currency.

In short, I think that most people's lives would continue without any major hitches. What would be the single biggest change? Everybody's paycheck would suddenly get a lot bigger because there would be no more federal income taxes.

Again, I'm sure there would be innumerable little problems to overcome in the short term, but I'm sure they'd all get ironed out. After all, the people of the former Soviet Union did it. There's no reason to assume that Americans couldn't do at least as well.

Geoffrey wrote:Again, I'm sure there would be innumerable little problems to overcome in the short term, but I'm sure they'd all get ironed out. After all, the people of the former Soviet Union did it. There's no reason to assume that Americans couldn't do at least as well.

Two of the little problems resulting from the dissolution of central authority (from an upcoming research paper written by me and my colleagues):

Ukraine is seeing a steady decline in population (51 million inhabitants at independence, but only 46 million by 2008 estimates), which some researchers are billing a demographic catastrophe. The mid- and long-term demographic perspectives of Ukraine are considered extremely negative by both external and internal forecasts. The only area of debate is which of the alarming figures should be expected for the future. The entire system of socio-economic processes is impacted by the fact that, according to estimates made by Dolja (Fate), a Ukrainian womens’ CSO, approximately 30 million legal and illegal abortions had been performed in Ukraine between 1992 and 2007.

As case studies suggest, ‘trafficking in female slaves’ has become an extensive business, and the ‘market price’ of a young Ukrainian woman may be worth between € 800–3000. This kind of business became so extensive that it may even raise state security issues. The number of sex slaves kidnapped from the country is estimated to be around 30–40 thousand according to the Ukrainian National Security Agency.

Granted, the US is not the Soviet Union, and Ukraine isn't the entirety of the post-Soviet space (e.g. the Baltics are doing pretty fine, the global economic crisis notwithstanding), so the parallels aren't very meaningful, but still. Be careful what you wish for.

Geoffrey wrote:

AxeMental wrote:G: "My dearest political hope is for the U. S. federal government to simply and peacefully cease to exist"

This might be a dumb question...but what would happen (in theory)? I mean, what negative things would occur?

For perspective, keep firmly in mind that even the countries of the former Soviet Union (of all places!) could and did peacefully go from being a vast empire to being 15 different countries. And that was almost 20 years ago.

If the U. S. federal government ceased to exist, I think that very few bad things would happen, and all the bad things would be short-term.

The vast majority of government "services" (such as they are) are provided by state and local governments. The average Joe in the streets has only two things provided for him by the fed gov: the post office, and the mint.

Consider that people don't fly in from Washington D. C. each morning to staff your local post office. It's staffed locally. I think the mail service would simply be taken over relatively smoothly by each of the 50 state governments.

The mint is found in Denver, Colorado and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Again, the mints are staffed locally. I think the 50 state governments would simply contract for Colorado and Pennsylvania to continue (in the short-term, anyway) to mint money for all 50 states. I think, however, that this would be only temporary. I suspect that eventually each state would start to mint its own currency.

In short, I think that most people's lives would continue without any major hitches. What would be the single biggest change? Everybody's paycheck would suddenly get a lot bigger because there would be no more federal income taxes.

Again, I'm sure there would be innumerable little problems to overcome in the short term, but I'm sure they'd all get ironed out. After all, the people of the former Soviet Union did it. There's no reason to assume that Americans couldn't do at least as well.

That's gotta be one of the most naive, rose-colored glass wearing, polly anna political posts that I've ever read.

The USSR didn't have much of an economy to collapse when it did. It was also a command economy that could keep going through centralization and inertia. The U.S. economy doesn't even vaguely work like that.

What happens to the military? Do you have any idea how many really pissd off ex-federal military personnel there are around the globe who will find themselve abanoned without a paycheck? The USSR didn't project nearly the amount of power over the distance that the U.S currently projects. Now, let's discuss the U.S. soil based troops who are also now without paychecks, are armed very, very well and will now essentially answer to no one. Do the names Scippio, Ceaser, Antony, Octavian, Pompeii, etc mean anything to you?

While the states take their grand ol' time re-aligning themselves into the utopian peaceful co-existence that you envision, there's going to be some serious hell to pay. Just as one minor example, I'm betting a lot of people outside of Louisiana don't realize how close Gaston Cajun came to shutting down the flow of crude and refined oil exiting the Pelican State post-Katrina. If we'd had a governor with any balls at the time (pun intended), the tactic could have been a viable threat. Certainly, with a collapse of centralized gov't no other state is entitled to Louisiana's oil. Don't think that Texas, Oklahoma and any other oil rich state wouldn't do the same. In fact, joining OPEC would likely be in those states' best interest, and good luck getting around on $50/gallon gasoline.

Poor, poor states that rely on the federal gov't to ensure that water flows to their grossly over-populated areas. I'm sure their fellow states will just continue to allow their own water sources to be poached to help out their brothers across the border. After all, human beans are known for their generosity when their own survival is at stake.

TheRedPriest, our respective expectations are (of course) essentially unprovable without the U. S. fed gov ceasing to exist.

That said, the USSR had oil, a large military, nuclear weapons, and all the rest. I remember back in 1991 some people predicted military invasions and even nuclear exchanges amongst the 15 former Soviet Republics. None of that happened. The peoples of the former USSR managed to muddle through. I see no reason that Americans would fall apart and go nutso in a similar situation. I think we too would successfully muddle through.

No government lasts forever. It's only a matter of time before the U. S. fed gov ceases to exist. We needn't fear that.

Geoffrey wrote:TheRedPriest, our respective expectations are (of course) essentially unprovable without the U. S. fed gov ceasing to exist.

That said, the USSR had oil, a large military, nuclear weapons, and all the rest. I remember back in 1991 some people predicted military invasions and even nuclear exchanges amongst the 15 former Soviet Republics. None of that happened. The peoples of the former USSR managed to muddle through. I see no reason that Americans would fall apart and go nutso in a similar situation. I think we too would successfully muddle through.

No government lasts forever. It's only a matter of time before the U. S. fed gov ceases to exist. We needn't fear that.

After 70-ish years of boots on their necks, the Russian peoples initially lacked the self-motivation to do much of anything. They'd been subsistence living for a very long time, and you don't just SNAP out of that in a heartbeat. Of course, they're heading right back to the same dictatorial gov't they had previously (under a new guise), only now, the criminals may operate more openly.

Yeah, Americans will behave much differently than the Russians did. I'm not making a judgement call on whether that's good or bad, but it'll be different. Also, if I'm not mistaken, although the Russian military had guns, I don't think they were as prevalent as they are with American Joe. Also, our states are more independent than Soviet states ever were. While governors and legislatures suck at Auntie Sam's teats, they're more autonomous than Soviet states were.

FWIW, we haven't yet seen the full effect of the breakdown of the old Soviet regime, and 18 years is nothing. Let's revisit this and see where the Russians are say .. oh .. about 20 years from now.

After the formation of the United States there was alot of discussion of state rights vs. federal. I think back then it was advantagous to hold together so states didn't get picked off by European nations. Likewise, I think we'd have the same problem today (not militarily but with the same results I'd imagine). You'd get polarization (with state constitutions being changed or reinterpreted to match places more liberal like France). What would suck is if you happened to live in one of these states (had your business there etc.) and moving wasn't an option. Presently the Federal Constitution applies to everyone no matter what state you live in. Without it, states that are already extreme in their politics would walk all over citizens (and those citizens would have no recourse...no Supreme Court). For some reason we have an extremely liberal State Supreme Court that is constantly being overruled by the Federal court (the most famous case being Bush/Clinton election. This would also be a problem considering most people move frequently in their carreers form state to state (who'd want to move to one that had less freedom for instance).


That Federal court is of course a two edged sword, and in a future world I could see it being used as a means of surpressing the people (through gross miss-interpretations of rights). The trend has been for the court system to create law bypassing congress. I suspect this trend will only pick up in the future.

The option or threat of breaking from the Union is nice, because it is an ever ready threat to the Feds when they start going too extreme. I doubt we'd ever see a Blue state demand independence, but I could easily see a block of solid red states giving Washington the collective bird and going it alone. Also, I seriously doubt this would cause any sort of civil war. If Texas (just say in theory) declared independence today the US govt. wouldn't acknowledge it, but they wouldn't come in tanks to collect federal income taxes etc. They'd just wait it out until state politics change.