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No government basically means living in a cave with a 20-year life expectancy. You go ahead and enjoy that. I kind of like it that humanity became civilized.
and every other state too, nobody turns down free money......
No such thing as "free money". Texas taxes go into those disaster relief funds - when there is a disaster in Texas, we want some of it back. We usually have to fight for it with Obama. Immediate relief comes from the State with our Rainy Day fund.
No government basically means living in a cave with a 20-year life expectancy. You go ahead and enjoy that. I kind of like it that humanity became civilized.
What irritates me, is that most people actually believe this.
First, in like 99% of the areas of the world in which humans have ever lived, there are no caves anywhere nearby. The reason we often think of our ancestors as "cavemen", is because when they find prehistoric human artifacts, they are often in caves, being that the caves "preserve" them. Cave-paintings can last practically forever, since it doesn't rain inside a cave.
In most areas where there are caves, the ground is very rocky, the weather is often cold, and there is little food nearby.
To the extent that we often associate anti-government people with the mountains(and thus caves), that is a relatively-modern invention.
Until recently, civilization has been primarily about farming. And it is difficult or impossible to farm in the mountains. So civilizations(IE states) have generally only existed in relatively flat areas, usually with rivers nearby. The mountains have been useless to governments, so governments generally didn't care if people ran off into them, because it took more effort to send Armies in after them, than the amount of food/taxes/resources that they could get out of them.
Of course, in recent years the mountains have become tourist locations, for skiing and other activities. So the government has begun to clamp down on the "mountain-people", for sake of the economy.
As for the whole life-expectancy thing. I don't know of any society, ever, which has had a life-expectancy of twenty. There is a debate over what the life-expectancy was for people pre-civilization. And it is simply impossible to really know.
What you are most-likely familiar with, is people talking about the life-expectancy of say, medieval Europe. There are multiple reasons why this is problematic. But the first one has to do with "child mortality".
As a general rule, if you live to ~15 or so, you aren't going to die of disease, or much of anything else, until you are much older. The people who die from disease are generally the very young, and the very old. Before vaccines and antibiotics, child mortality was much higher than it is today. There was probably a 15% chance that your baby wouldn't survive to its first birthday, and a 25% chance that your child wouldn't survive to its 15th birthday.
Somewhat ironically, the children of farmers had a much better chance of living to adulthood than the children of those who lived in cities. Because disease could spread rapidly in densely-packed urban populations. While people who lived in the countryside, far away from civilization, had almost no contact with most diseases.
In fact, most diseases, as you might know, are the result of "trade". The black plague actually originated in East Asia, and was brought to Europe by traders.
The reason the life-expectancy numbers are silly, is if one person dies shortly after birth, and another lives to be 79 years-old, then their two ages get averaged, pushing the life-expectancy down to ~40. Which is an accurate number, but paints a misleading picture of reality.
The truth is, if you lived to your 15th birthday, your life-expectancy, even thousands of years ago, would generally be into your 60's or 70's. A man wasn't "middle-aged" at 30.
As I tell people constantly, the only thing I would need if I went back in time, would be some antibiotics. What else is going to kill me? And I would likely be much healthier if I lived back then. I would probably eat healthier food, and get far more exercise.
Of course, I'm mainly focusing on pre-civilization. The actual question might instead be whether you can have civilization without a state. Many people believe civilization doesn't require a state, and that people would form civilization without government coercion. Some, like Murray Rothbard, believe that voluntary associations could even be superior to government, by creating a free-market that would be more-productive than our current over-regulated economy.
I tend to fall closer to you on this issue, I do not believe that you can have civilization without a coercive government. And without civilization, you cannot have technology(at least not on the level it currently is). And the furthest humanity would most-likely ever get from an organizational perspective without coercive government, would be somewhere around the Amish.
Strong and independent TX, "we want to secede, but hey, before we do, any chance you could send us XX million dollars? We had a bad flood and need funds etc...". That doesn't strike you as a tad bit hypocritical?
Let's be honest, it's not gonna happen, but in this fantasy world where TX does secede, and another natural disaster hits, what happens then? How is that going to work?
You do realize that Texas pays more into the federal government than they receive don't you? They just put in their own income tax and Texas is running a profit, the US government is the one that loses a big chunk of net tax gain.
That's funny I'm from NY, grew up there, and heard zero mention of anyone wanting to secede. The only things that popped up from time to time is Northern NY, wanting to break away from NYC.
If TX is supposed to be 100 percent self sustainable if they secede, why are they asking for fed $$$. It doesn't exactly stoke the fires of confidence if they are asking for $$$. Heck, TX should prove it to their own citizens that they can actually pull it off.
You do realize that Texas citizens pay federal taxes, in fact the US government takes more in tax money than they give back to Texas and last time I checked it was not even close.
You do realize that Texas pays more into the federal government than they receive don't you? They just put in their own income tax and Texas is running a profit, the US government is the one that loses a big chunk of net tax gain.
Yes and that is the reason Texas is being held up as an example, not Alabama or Mississippi. If they were to secede both Texas and the US would lose, as already has been pointed out there are many government subsidized facilities in Texas that would disappear. Strange that a state that benefits enormously from the government hates big government.
I'm in favor if there being separate nations for both Left and Right. It's ludicrous that people with such opposite political agenda's fight over the same government.
Textit is a non-issue. They shut up and go away every time there is a Republican in the White House. Same with right-wingers on here. The whining stops a d the sky is no longer falling.....for 4 years anyway
Could you tell us what we'd lose? Honestly, what does Texas have that no other state couldn't ultimately replace?
Off the top of my head. Oil refineries could eventually be replaced but seeing as how it has been 40 years since one has been built I would guess that is going to be tough to do with the environmental regulations basically preventing them from being built now. Their oil fields cannot be replaced, the net income from federal taxes will be hard to replace without higher taxes on the rest of us, their beef and other food production cannot be replaced, the port in Houston and port arthur cannot just be replaced. The entire reason for the keystone pipeline is that the refineries to process the crude oil are in Texas, and the shipping to send that oil worldwide are in Texas.
I am not from Texas, have no particular love for Texas, but I understand how the tax system and oil and gas systems work, and both of them right now are very dependent on Texas to work for the rest of us. Texas throws a 10% tax on their gas that is sold to other states currently and our price for gas goes up as we do not have the capabilities to even process enough oil into gas to keep cars running without Texas. Texas could set up their own income tax collecting on average 6% less than they pay in on average to the federal government and come out the exact same right now. Throw a gas tax on exports and they do not even have to tax their citizens that high.
Yes we could survive it, and Texas could survive it, but if you do not think it would hurt the USA to lose Texas than you need to educate yourself, as it would not be pretty.
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