Is it time to consider a looser union?

I've been thinking about this for a long time. What we have right now is not working - we go from election to election, careening between trying to be a responsible world leader and being an increasingly dangerous and unstable empire.

It's worth noting that Europe does not have a strong central leader, rather deliberately so. It has independent countries, though they tend to form regional blocs. Each bloc tends to establish internal policy, and yes, it goes from conservative to progressive and back, but overall these blocs are stable.

The US has states that act in sort of the same way. Some of those states, such as California, Texas, New York, and Florida, have economies that are as large as some of the largest countries elsewhere (California, for instance, has a higher GDP than India). Others are far smaller (North Dakota is about the same size as Serbia as an example). A nice visual that shows this:

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One of the problems that we face in the US is that while the economies of each of these states is largely independent (they tend to act in regional blocs), social policies, foreign policy and cultural imperatives are increasingly being dictated from above. As the recent election showed, this can often mean that what is perfectly acceptable and even desired by one state or region (a female president of color, for instance), may be unacceptable by another state or region, and this consequently brings resentment, fear, and conflict between regions with different cultural boundaries. This can have disastrous consequences.

Perhaps it is time for the US to restructure - create four to six autonomous regional blocs, each of which handles its own internal AND foreign policy, maintain its own healthcare, welfare and taxation system, with the federal government then providing common shared services. Each region would have a regional center, ensuring that its member states have the support that they need. The federal structure would then exist primarily to deal with intercontinental issues, to establish common standards and to resolve disputes.

Again, to put this in perspective.When the US was first constituted under Articles of Confederation, this failed, in great part because at the time there was neither the population density nor the wealth necessary to support such a structure. This is why we moved to a federal system in the first place. However, today this is no longer true. Regional blocks (such as the West Coast). have larger populations than the United States did until about 1900.

This is one area where I tend to disagree with most Democrats. I don't think that the Southeast will ever be in agreement with the West Coast or the Northeast on most issues, nor do I think that Texas is suddenly going to go blue or California go red. They are just too culturally different. (I'm not really even sure that Texas and the Mountain States completely see eye to eye with the Southeast, for that matter).

There are several advantages to this - with the US as large as it is, it becomes challenging to create a one-size fits all healthcare system, especially when you have to deal with philosophical differences between fair and free economic theory. The same applies to retirement and basic living subsidies, and the role of religion in society. Moreover, it provides a level of contagion. As it is right now, the President is too powerful, and changing administrations at this level have world-wide ramifications. When you have a good leader and administrator, the country can move mountains, when bad, the same country can level them. By breaking up power, you may end up with different regions aligning with different combatants in a war, but it also means that there will be some support rather than all or nothing (it also cuts down on "adventuring&quot .

Furthermore, I suspect that this process is already underway. People are self-separating, moving out of areas that do not match their particular aspirations and into areas that more closely align. This means that the polarization that we have seen will only become more pronounced over time, not less. This becomes even more the case as the ability for people to work remotely climbs. Over time, this also becomes a referendum of its own, because as the population in a region rises and falls, so too will the economy. Right now, the overarching federal system protects states from their own follies, usually by the states that manage their economies well. In such a system, that safety net goes away.

How do we get here from there? Likely via a Constitutional Convention and from there, a plebiscite of each state and territory. The problem that we face is that we probably should have had such a convention regularly, say every 40 years. I was originally opposed to the idea myself, but given the current situation, I see it as preferable to the alternative, which is living in a totalitarian country ruled by a narcissistic conman.