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Op-Ed:"States are a relic of the past. It’s time to get rid of them."

sanman said:
Some nut argues in the Washington Post that it's now time to get rid of states (because if states cause you to lose the election, then it's time to get rid of them?) :doh
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Wasn't it Trump who argued "we have to get rid of the lines around the state, artificial lines"? (Yes, it was.)
 
Northern Light said:
They're not really relics if humans still place so much faith in them. At some point in the distant future humanity will not be so hung up on tribal divisions but for now that's a far off reality.

The colonial powers in Europe showed us that long term instability can be created by artificially dividing a people into two, either through domestic laws or by partitioning land into separate countries. Peoples that used to blend relatively harmoniously suddenly become bitter enemies, if imperialists use a targeted rhetoric to cause social changes. Because you never know when you might want to re-conquer an area, so might as well keep people there fighting.

Tribalism is still the level that humanity operates from, so no point in acting like we are beyond it.
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That was a very insightful post.
You sound like a Hispanic teacher friend of mine in the valley who is a Cultural Archeologist.
What he told me about "cave time" totally changed the way I see relationships.

I am also reminded of those two guys in 1918, one French and one British who drew a line on a map and "created" Iraq.
Few tribal or natural borders are a straight line.
 
RetiredNSmilin said:
That was a very insightful post.
You sound like a Hispanic teacher friend of mine in the valley who is a Cultural Archeologist.
What he told me about "cave time" totally changed the way I see relationships.

I am also reminded of those two guys in 1918, one French and one British who drew a line on a map and "created" Iraq.
Few tribal or natural borders are a straight line.
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Tell me more about "cave time". :)

It's true about the straight lines. If you look at a map of the world, the areas with borders that have fewer organic looking lines are usually artificially created ones that have little to do with the sociology of the area.

Iraq comes to mind. So does Pakistan.
 
sanman said:
Give me a break - show me what was comparable to the scale of the nuttiness we're seeing now from the Left. And these people were the ones demanding Trump accept the results of the election. How come the same question wasn't asked of them?

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You've sent him looking for easier threads to attack :)
 
Northern Light said:
Tell me more about "cave time". :)

It's true about the straight lines. If you look at a map of the world, the areas with borders that have fewer organic looking lines are usually artificially created ones that have little to do with the sociology of the area.

Iraq comes to mind. So does Pakistan.
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His insights into "cave time" were pretty eye opening.

It seems we are still cavemen, and our programming from back then is still with us.
Back then, the men hunted all day in groups and brought back the meat for all to share.
Once back home, after chasing down deer with pointed sticks, the men needed time to relax and rest.
During this time they just want to be left alone and be silent.
men also have a finite number of words to use every day.
women also have a finite number of words, but the number is much more.
At the end of the day, the caveman had used up his words and just wanted to sit in the cave and relax in silence.
the women, on the other hand, still have more words to use, so they still want to talk, and talk.

Fast forward to a typical bar scene. (this is where I first met him, BTW)
In a typical bar around 6pm, you will see individual men sitting alone drinking calmly and in silence.
In that same bar you will see groups of women sitting together talking with each other.
He said, this is NOT the time for a man to come up to the women and attempt to interact with them.
They still have words to use and are using them.
He then said if you wait till the women start getting more quiet and start looking around the bar, is the time to initiate any interaction.
Sure enough, at about 7:30 or so, the two groups of women started looking around the bar, and any man who approached before was politely shot down
But the women would have also been shot down if they tried to bother the men during their "cave time".

Both men and women have "cave time" where they each need to have their moments.

Thousands of years have made us this way.

I saw this happen with the people in that little Brownsville, TX bar as if they were acting on que(sp).
 
Kal'Stang said:
Funnily enough your answer was already given 8 years ago. Or did you forget that the Left has a sitting President right this very moment? And the first two years of his Presidency the left also controlled both the Senate and House.



Funny. You have been saying this for what? 3 years now? Looks to me like the GOP is proving you wrong. They managed to take the WH and keep control of both the Senate and the House for how many years now?
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Not to mention a preponderance of state and local governments. I think maybe the Amazing Kreskin should hold off on making any more predictions for a while. Just sayin'. ;)
 
RetiredNSmilin said:
I want to cuddle a kitty and have some coco, but instead I have to install a ceiling fan in about 30 minutes.
That is the major difference.
I MUST DO what I MUST DO, before I get to do what I want to do.

God said, Sunday was a day of rest, but the wife did not get that memo.
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I agree

Somehow my "honey do" list always seems to grow around the holidays

And Sunday's where I set aside a little free time to watch my football team get demolished, she always seems to find items that need doing now

But what is the saying....happy wife, happy life

Small price to pay in my opinion
 
I dunno. I actually think there might be some decent benefits to getting rid of state level governments. The federal government has gotten so large it does seem a bit redundant sometimes to have both. A central goverment with local prefects would be probably much more efficent. You wouldn't have the regulatory hassle of there being 50 sets of regulatory bodies. I'm sure in some ways that makes business more difficult. Multi state Infrastucture projects are more difficult. Adapting to new economic enviroments is more difficult since you have to change 51 different sets of legislation. Why pay for city, county, state, and federal goverments to all inefficiently do overlapping jobs? How many redudant governmental institutions are we supporting with tax dollars? I wouldn't dismiss the notion entirely.
 
Henrin said:
:roll:
Yes, the prediction is 2060 now, but it used to be 2050, which of course was my point.
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If you're still on the green side of the grass in 2060 come back and tell us all about it.




"Better days are coming." ~ But not for today's out of touch,running out of time,GOP.
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shrubnose said:
States will be around for a long time.They're not going away anytime soon.
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Probably true. But I think it's possible that in the future, nation-states will have the same status as states here in the US. They will have a good measure of autonomy on their own internal affairs. But on issues of international trade, international agreements, security issues, etc.... there is going to be an international federation of states- eg, a United Nations with actual teeth to create and enforce international law, contracts, and agreements. It would be like the USA, except it would be USW- United States of the World: with its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches, its own systems of checks and balances and separation of powers, its dynamic tension between local and federal government, .... The US system of government has shown itself to be a fairly stable system of government for several centuries now. It would be a good template to implement on an international scale.

One reason the world is in such a hot mess as it is now is because there is no real system of law and order. There is no law. UN agreements are not really law, because there is no means of law enforcement. Law without a means of enforcement is not law. It's more like "suggestions", or "encouragement". No one has to follow anything if they don't want. And then we wonder why there is so much dysfunction.

Think about if all nations just kept only as much weaponry as they would need to police their own borders, and the international federal government would have only enough weapons to enforce its law. The massive spending on nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles by every single nation, tanks and fighter aircraft, carriers and destroyers, ... all that would go. People would not have to worry about the constant threat of annihilation by geopolitical instability. And the money that would be saved could then be directed to things like education and jobs training, infrastructure, public health and medical care, biomedical and scientific research, etc.... Think of the weight of the chains lifted off humanity's back.

It's not such a bad idea. The opening post is saying, correctly, that the idea of nation states started in the 18th century. That's true. But even back then, some truly visionary thinkers were already beginning to see beyond it:

https://www.amazon.com/Perpetual-Peace-Immanuel-Kant/dp/159986861X
 
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RetiredNSmilin said:
His insights into "cave time" were pretty eye opening.

It seems we are still cavemen, and our programming from back then is still with us.
Back then, the men hunted all day in groups and brought back the meat for all to share.
Once back home, after chasing down deer with pointed sticks, the men needed time to relax and rest.
During this time they just want to be left alone and be silent.
men also have a finite number of words to use every day.
women also have a finite number of words, but the number is much more.
At the end of the day, the caveman had used up his words and just wanted to sit in the cave and relax in silence.
the women, on the other hand, still have more words to use, so they still want to talk, and talk.

Fast forward to a typical bar scene. (this is where I first met him, BTW)
In a typical bar around 6pm, you will see individual men sitting alone drinking calmly and in silence.
In that same bar you will see groups of women sitting together talking with each other.
He said, this is NOT the time for a man to come up to the women and attempt to interact with them.
They still have words to use and are using them.
He then said if you wait till the women start getting more quiet and start looking around the bar, is the time to initiate any interaction.
Sure enough, at about 7:30 or so, the two groups of women started looking around the bar, and any man who approached before was politely shot down
But the women would have also been shot down if they tried to bother the men during their "cave time".

Both men and women have "cave time" where they each need to have their moments.

Thousands of years have made us this way.

I saw this happen with the people in that little Brownsville, TX bar as if they were acting on que(sp).
Click to expand...

That's really interesting! I can see why some people might think that's a bit biologically deterministic, but observed behaviors don't really lie. Is there any explanation for why there is a difference in the max number of words between the sexes?
 
We humans were able to move beyond our caves, to form larger tribal units. We have then formed cities and city states, and then to larger and larger social groups. At some points they even talked of things like "We noble Roman citizens", when that referred to basically half the planet. Our biology has not limited us in any of those areas in being able to form larger cohesive units. I am not sure why we must think of our biology as limiting us there now. It just depends on how large a group you can get people to think of as "one of us" in terms of cultural and social identity. There is an emotional center for us, for something like a sense of solidarity with other humans. But this sense seems to be fairly generalized and, if done properly, can include fairly large numbers of people. There doesn't seem to be an upper limit. After all, Americans learned to think beyond only their states as "one of us" to create a sense of an American identity now, as opposed to just being Virginians or Pennsylvanians or New Yorkers. More recently, the Europeans have moved beyond thinking of themselves as Frenchmen or Italians or Germans, and are increasingly thinking of themselves as just Europeans. Can you imagine after WWII a Frenchmen and a German thinking of themselves as having any kind of common identity? It would have been laughable. They would have refused to even sit in the same room together.
 
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