Decentralization and Secession

Recorded in St. Petersburg, Florida on October 22, 2021.

All polities come to an end sooner or later. The fanciful America-will-last-forever position is something that should seem plausible only to small children or the hopelessly naïve. 

Bob covers some of the key points in his new pamphlet on restoring the Republic of Texas.

Is this trend toward soft secession necessarily illiberal? Is the potential for creating more states or political subdivisions, even if smaller and less sclerotic, moving us further from an idealized Hoppean private community model?

Millions of Americans have no conception of economics, and simply don’t believe tradeoffs exist.

Political decentralization in modern times has shown itself to be the most potent intellectual restraint on the growth of Leviathan. The Constitution is not enough.

For the libertarian, the way forward is not joining in left-right political boxing matches, but secession. The success of libertarianism is independence from the state’s influence.

Often, when the “smash the state” position is invoked—especially among those less familiar with the state as an institution—further investigation reveals a dangerous lack of precision about what exactly the state is.

The present Trudeau administration has continued straining economic relations with the western provinces. And the government’s tough lockdowns have heightened polarization in Canadian politics,

Jörg Guido Hülsmann examines the economics of guerrilla warfare and how secessionist movements can succeed against a larger state.