From the White-Pillbox: Part 6

Talk of secession is a good indicator of progress towards a free society.

A quick caveat: this essay’s purpose is not to show favor or disfavor for the activism of secession. Its purpose is to demonstrate that the growing public dialogue of secession is itself a significant White Pill. ¹

Now, to the White Pill…

As of this writing (2021), the idea of a region of the United States seceding from the union is not widely discussed. However, secession has actually been on the radar.

A recent poll across all regions in the U.S. showed that significant percentages of voters favor secession. Tellingly, the predominant party tended to score the highest. Moreover, these percentages increased compared to the same poll done earlier in the year.

It should be noted that the framing of the poll assumed that a group of seceding states would form their own union. However, various individual states have considered individual secession (wherein the state becomes a sovereign nation), most notably Texas. Even cities have considered seceding from their regional government.

The important take-away is that the discussion is on the table.

Larger governments are worse than smaller

The White Pill of secession is the trend away from large governments, in the direction of smaller ones (and ultimately, no government: full individual sovereignty). Some problems with bigger governments are:

• Fewer competing states in the world: the fewer there are, the more difficult it is for people to migrate to a less intrusive region.

• Concentration of state wealth and power. The financial influence and physical power of large governments create proportionally greater human suffering. Their influence makes them less answerable to both competing states, as well as to their widely disbursed population.

Comparisons with the Civil War

Detractors of modern secession try to taint the topic by equating it with the violence and turmoil of the American Civil War.

Fundamentally the War happened for one reason: one government did not want it, and was willing to go to war to keep it from happening. It seems clear that if the federal government accepted the South’s secession, it would have simply happened. Thus, assuming a modern secession will necessarily be violent presupposes one government would use violence to prevent it ².

But modern secession discussions are centered more around the idea of a national divorce: the idea that differences (political, cultural, etc.) are so great as to be irreconcilable, and that a peaceful separation is better for all concerned. As with the typical divorce of a couple, it can be combative or amicable. Very recent political break-ups have been relatively peaceful: Brexit, the split of Czechoslovakia, even the fall of the Soviet Union.

Likelihood of the federal government permitting peaceful secession

Whether American state secession efforts are peaceful or not depends on the incentives at work among the parties. The seceding region would certainly want it to be peaceful. This would leave it to the parent government to hold it sufficiently against its interests so as to be willing to use violence to resist the attempt.

I contend the federal government would ultimately acquiesce. Consider political lobbying groups an analogy.

Lobbyists represent a very small number of people, who are highly active and focused on their goal. This contrasts with the general public. Although they pay and suffer from the successes of special interest groups, the general public (despite their greater number) are not financed, focused, or active with respect to the lobbyists’ goals. Thus, the lobbyists tend to succeed.

A seceding region is comparable to a lobbyist group, with targeted incentives and a committed constituency. But the parent government’s incentives against secession are more disbursed, and compete with its numerous unrelated concerns. Basically, the seceding group is motivated to keep pushing; the larger government is ever-challenged to justify the trouble of opposing secession. ³

The cascade effect

The first with a new idea is the outlier. But once the idea takes form in reality, it emboldens others to try. When the idea gains steam, it can become unstoppable.

And the idea itself becomes “open source”. For example, a single state that secedes from the United States may inspire a sub-region of a large state (such as New York or California) to secede from its parent state. This is especially likely because large states do indeed have sub-regions whose political views vary widely.

A county may wish to secede from its parent state. Or a city may wish to secede from its state/county. There is precedent for this, with real-world sovereign cities in existence today.

Greater choices

The more sovereign entities that exist, the easier it will be for individuals to choose an area freer than their own. Regions will differ as to how much or little they manage currency and the economy: this could be highly significant if a currency emerges superior to the dollar.

There could of course be regions that govern in more authoritarian ways. This would be likely if a highly progressive region such as New York City or Los Angeles became sovereign. But the positive from this would be the obvious negative model it would represent to the world. This was visibly evident during the COVID experience in these areas (notably, people continue to leave the progressive areas for freer regions, rather than flock to them). Sadly, stricter government in a sovereign region would lead to greater suffering of their own population, but at least it would be limited, and ultimately, self-detonating.

Conclusion

The public lesson from the principle of secession would be the moral right to desire sovereignty. This would open the door to acceptable public discussions of ever-smaller sovereign units.

It would take no significant imagination for the public to eventually see this principle as appropriate even for the individual.

1. From the anarchist/voluntaryist perspective, the State in all its forms is illegitimate. Whether federal, state, county, local, etc., all governments rule their population non-consensually. Since violation of consent is immoral regardless of whether done by one man or a group, all governments are immoral.

This means that technically, the purist perspective is idle regarding secession, since secession merely replaces one overriding coercive authority with another. To the anarchist, advocating for political secession supports continued enslavement, by simply substituting slave masters.

2. I believe we can dismiss as unlikely the notion that private individuals or groups would use violence in a secession attempt. First, we would have to assume both governments would not object to a proposed separation (if one of the governments did, it would employ its own organized violence, making private violence unnecessary).

That means individuals would need to be sufficiently motivated to use violence to prevent the secession. Since we’ve stipulated it would be permitted by the two governments, then by definition the separation would hold a significant level of public acceptance. Detractors would thus need to feel that their numbers sufficiently match the numbers who accept it. Also, the desire to resist would have to outweigh their other options, one of which would be relocating. Although leaving one’s home region is not easy, it would have to be so great an inconvenience that they would be willing to risk their and their families’ lives. Moreover, the smaller the geographic regions involved, the more powerful is the option to move. All in all, the chances of real violence in a government-approved secession seem small.

3. For example, in the Civil War, the union needed to use the moral case against slavery to inspire public opposition to secession. However, no comparable moral justification exists today for objecting to secession.