Secession Roundup

Peter Schiff talks about secession

"Believe me, as things get worse and worse in America, more and more people are going to be looking at secession as a possibility."-Peter Schiff

Of course fake liberals like Chris Matthews find secession talk "shocking". "Liberals" are nothing but statist hypocrites and liars.

In Defense of the Second Amendment

I believe we are coming close to the end of the nation-state as we have known it for the past 500 years. I believe that the military historian, Martin van Creveld, is correct. The central governments are running out of solvency, and their ability to provide protection against crime and also provide retirement benefits for the mass of humanity, is in decline.

Over the next half-century, and perhaps even less, politicians are going to realize that they can no longer protect citizens against armed criminals locally, and they cannot afford to support their aging populations. At that point, there will be a transfer of legitimacy back in the direction of local civil government. Local civil governments will rest heavily upon armed citizens who are in a position to be deputized.

So, I expect a greater decentralization. This decentralization will take place most rapidly in societies where citizens have never surrendered their right to keep and bear arms. This is why I think the United States is the most likely nation to be the working model for this process of decentralization. Americans are more heavily armed than any other people in the democratic world. They may not be as heavily armed as rural residents of Afghanistan, but they are surely better armed than any other Western nation except Switzerland.-In Defense of the Second Amendment

Gerald Celente: 2013 Trends Include Secession Secession Progression: A year ago, we forecast secession movements springing up around the world. The trend has grown from ripple to groundswell as citizens become increasingly hostile to their unresponsive governments. Following the re-election of Barack Obama in the US, over a million people signed petitions in favor of seceding from the Union. Worldwide, there are some 250 secessionist movements. As governments focus upon saving only the too-big-to-fail, people will rise up against nations seen as "too-big-to govern" and "too-broken-to fix." The evidence for a secession trend is obvious, but the media and politicians ignore or deride it.-War & Peace, An Awakening: Renaissance or Ruin?

Secession? It Happens All the Time - by Jim Fedako

It would seem those who cannot conceive of voluntary governing entities have never looked closely at a map of political boundaries in Ohio. For, if they had, they would have noticed pockets of resistance inside the political monoliths that are Ohio cities.

Although central Ohio is almost tabletop flat, city boundaries appear more like metastasizing cancers than squared-off grids, with the tentacles of each Leviathan reaching from its respective city center to burgeoning tax bases in outlying areas. Not in an orderly fashion, like a box being stretched on all sides, but more like cancerous appendages finding paths of least resistance. And where Leviathan meets Leviathan, city boundaries twist and turn, but never cross, in an effort to consume whatever additional taxes remain available.

As cities expand, they tend to island properties where residents want no part of the respective city’s income tax and associated ills – with the cancerous tentacles reaching around recalcitrant residents and surrounding them. So buried within city limits, you will find sanctuaries of voluntary resistance.

The mix of cities and sanctuaries is made all the more obvious while driving area roads and noting the occasional quick succession of signs that read, "Enter Corp" and "Leave Corp."

Cities in Ohio grow through annexation, a mostly voluntary process whereby property owners decide to switch allegiance from their townships to neighboring cities. I say mostly voluntary, because, as with all things political, machinations sometimes come into play.

Typically, annexations occur when a developer purchases empty land adjoining the city limits. The developer desires benefits such as the higher density allowed by city zoning or city-funded road improvements for his proposed shopping mall, etc., while city government desires the additional taxes. The annexation is deemed beneficial to both developer and city government, though it typically ends up a detriment to taxpayers already within city limits.

It is important to note that almost every annexation includes a corresponding secession – with a property owner seceding from his township in order to be annexed into the city. So, in principle, secession is an accepted practice.1

Of course, secession is not currently an option at the state level. Nor does Ohio have provisions for secession through voluntary action as a means to leave a city to rejoin the township. However, secession is allowed, nonetheless.

So, if land is allowed to switch political boundaries, with the a priori result being benefits for the landowner and the political entity, it would seem that truly voluntary governing entities are both feasible and efficient.

I claim that such voluntary agreements would be efficient since both parties (property owner and governing entity) agreed to the switch from their respective standpoints of a priori gains – they both expected to gain from the agreement. And the concept of individual gains holds for both property owners who agreed to annexation as well as those who desired to remain in a newly encircled, low-tax enclave – both having benefited a priori by their respective decisions.

Now I have not come to defend the state, but to bury it. I only use the above as an example of where resistance and changing allegiances are reality, with no corresponding breakdown in society. Given this, it is but a small conceptual leap from the current reality to a future of freedom.

This vision is a society organized on mutual agreements, where services provided by governments are provided by private enterprises. In this structure, property owners can agree to services offered by any given provider in the market, or they can secede, so to speak, from all. In this world, a man can be an island (property wise), if he so chooses.

Of course, the provider would set their best price, based on the market and demand. And the property owner would choose a provider based exclusively on subjective preferences, with the market tending to eliminate bad behaviors on both sides of the transaction.

This would be similar to a contract to subscribe to (say) cellular phone service. Certainly more detailed, but similar nonetheless.

So the current map of governing entities in Ohio, with its occasional areas of resistance, would be replaced with a map of coverage similar to what would be expected if phone service contracts were disclosed – a vast checkerboard of providers, with allegiances constantly switching. One difference being that private service providers would likely offer group discounts to neighboring properties, so there would be more clustering than with cellular phone services.

The point is the existence of a model of society based on mutual agreements. And this model shows that it is but a small leap from our current structure to one based on a system of secession and switching allegiances – a leap from the Leviathans to Liberty.

Notes:

1. Sometimes properties remain in both the city and the township, typically because the township fights annexation in the courts since it does not want its property tax base diminished.

-via LewRockwell.com