 Hello my friends and welcome to the 77th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. This is going to be a special episode about the Catalonian independence referendum that's coming up. In fact, it's going to take place in just a few hours from when I'm recording this. I did something similar for when the Brexit vote happened, and it's a great opportunity to talk about the underlying political philosophic principle of secession. Before we start, I want to give my thanks and welcome to several new patrons. That have signed up to support the show at patreon.com slash Steve Patterson. Thanks so much guys, I am glad that you're getting value from this show. And a special shout out to a very generous donor on PayPal. I finally set up my PayPal correctly, so you can do easy one-time donations and you can also do monthly donations. And this gentleman made a very generous contribution, which I deeply appreciate. So let's talk about Catalonia. For those of you who don't know, the eastern most district in Spain is going to be holding a referendum to secede and declare independence from Spain. Catalonia is where Barcelona is. The Spanish capital is in Madrid, and they do not approve of the Catalonian referendum. In fact, I just listened to an interview with some foreign minister who said there is no referendum happening. He said there are no voting premises, there are no ballot papers, and no authorities to check the authenticity of the vote. In other words, this is an unapproved, contentious referendum that is taking place, as millions of people are very likely to be voting, very possibly in favor of their own independence. In fact, the Spanish government has started to crack down on this vote taking place. And last I saw something like 13 Catalonian politicians had been arrested. The Spanish police are cracking down all over the place, and as you can imagine, it has angered a whole lot of people. So rather than talking just about the details of this one individual secessionist movement, I want to talk about the principle of secession. So full disclosure, I am biased. Prior to diving deep into philosophy and mathematics and physics, I got really interested in the world of ideas through the study of politics and economics. And so from my biased perspective, I think some political issues in fact are pretty much solved, at least on the theoretical side of things. There are some edge cases that are unclear, but I think the general principles are pretty straightforward. I supported Brexit, I support Cal Exit, I support Catalonia Exit, and any other groups that went to secede from their government. And the reason is fairly simple. It makes crystal clear sense to me that if a group is not being represented by their government, that they have a right to secede from that government and form their own political system. In fact, I think that should be the default approach to thinking of political issues. Why don't people, by default, just opt out of political systems that they don't like rather than to try to fight and struggle in a vicious political system wherever you are in the world? If you think of the default as being secession, that actually I think it's kind of a helpful way to frame any issues about concrete cases of secession around the world. Because if secession were seen as normal and obvious, then I think you'd actually have a really difficult case to make against secession. Rather than spending time arguing for secession, which I'll do in this episode, I think just a shift of perspective to where we think of secession as the norm, and we critically listen to cases against secession, I think would make people a heck of a lot more skeptical of the idea that political unity at all costs is a good idea. Okay, so we begin with a question in the abstract. Not about Spain, not about Scotland or the U.S. Take any group of people and let's say they do not feel represented by their government. Let's say they're a minority. You've got a million people who have a different, let's say cultural background, they have different economic priorities, they have different values, and they find themselves outweighed completely by the voice of the majority whom they disagree with. So the question is this, who determines whether or not those million people can govern themselves according to their own rules? Do they get to make that decision? Or does some other central government make that decision? I find it very peculiar to think that a minority of people has to seek legal permission to secede from a government that they view as not representing them. It's like, imagine that two people get married. And the man says, I completely support your right to get divorced so long as I give you permission to divorce me. That seems like a pretty bum deal. But that's what's going on with political structures. If you can only secede and govern yourself and be free, if those in power permit you to do so, how are you supposed to guard against tyranny? You're supposed to ask permission from the people who you think are tyrannizing you? Now with marriage, at least most of the time, this is a voluntary contract of two people for the most part, getting together voluntarily and entering into some kind of arrangement. With government, it's even worse than that. It's like an arranged marriage. You are born into a political system based on the happenstance of the geography of your birth. You didn't even choose to be part of this political structure in the first place. So how odd would it be then to seek permission from the king, to seek permission from the authorities in charge, to govern yourself and to have your community govern themselves as they see fit? Like I said, if you make the default, the right to secede, I think you're forced to make really peculiar arguments to defend this notion of political unity. Let me give you another concrete example for my life. I was raised in upstate New York. Upstate New York is completely different than living in New York City. I mean it is night and day. People living in upstate New York have more in common with rural people living in Scotland than they do with people living in Manhattan. Of course, when you say from New York, everybody assumes you're from New York City. But from anybody that has experience in upstate versus New York City, they know it is just two completely different worlds. It's like Kansas and Los Angeles, just totally different. Not only are there different economic differences between people living in New York City versus living upstate, there are radically different cultural differences, different cultural values. People in upstate New York tend to be a lot more religious than those living in New York City. They tend to want a lot smaller government than those living in New York City. They tend to want to have access to their guns much more so than people living in New York City. And so isn't it peculiar that both of these groups of people would be forced together to live under the same political structure? I assure you many, if not most, people in upstate New York, outside of the big cities, are not happy with the way that the government of New York has run. And hell for that matter, probably many New Yorkers living in the city aren't happy with it either. But they at least have a bigger voice because the big population center is in New York City. So why should it be the case that rural farmers in New York should play by the same rules as people living in Wall Street living in Manhattan? That is totally bonkers to me. Not to mention, culturally, these two people not only are different, but they don't like each other. This isn't just exclusive to New York City and upstate New York. This is true for pretty much any city versus rural living. The city folk look down on the country bumpkins. The country bumpkins don't like the city slicker. This isn't even exclusive to the United States, of course. This is true all around the world. Huge cultural and economic differences that come from living in a city versus living in the countryside. So why then would we force two groups of people who are different by virtually every metric into the same political structure? Force them into the same Congress where neither group of people can probably fathom the life of the other unless they've lived in the city if they're from the country or they lived in the country if they're from the city. I totally support the idea that the way to resolve a bunch of dramatic New York politics is to have upstate New York be its own self-governing body and you have New York City be its own self-governing body. And heck, there's enough people in New York City. You could probably have each borough have its own government that is going to more accurately represent the constituency of those locations. So that would be like a new exit. I support new exit. But the same thing, of course, applies to Catalonia. And this is why I support Catalonian secession. Even though a lot of the people like with the Brexit vote, a lot of the people arguing for secession probably will support higher taxes, maybe a bigger social safety net. Those kind of governmental policies that I as a libertarian don't support, I still support the principle of self-determination, of you being able to choose what government you're going to be a part of and you being able to say, if I'm not being represented, you schmucks in Washington DC or Madrid or London, I'm out of here. I'm going to associate with those who I freely associate with and I'm going to have my own governance structures. Now, sometimes people will object to this idea of secession and they'll say things like, oh, so you're just going to get national defense or you're just going to get the benefits of the bigger government without having to pay. You're going to opt out of paying for your taxes, to which I answer, sort of. Of course, opting out comes with its own strings attached. If you opt out of a political structure, you cannot then claim benefits of that political structure, assuming there are some. So for example, if California were to opt out of the United States, something I totally support, they then couldn't get access to Social Security. So if you're not paying for the services, you don't get to use the services. However, the wonderful, perfect, beautiful upside of that is if you don't want the services, you don't have to pay for the services. So if I don't want Social Security, which I don't, I don't have to pay the taxes for Social Security. If I don't want to have the government take my tax money and blow up a bunch of people in the Middle East, well, I don't have to pay taxes for that. Wouldn't that be beautiful? Imagine that you had some kind of political structure where you could pay for the services that you wanted and you don't have to pay for the services that you don't want. That's the kind of political structure I want. You could think of that political structure as something like a voluntary governance. The scary word for it is anarchism, which is a fun word to throw around to have people gasp at you. Oh my gosh, you're an anarchist. Really, it's just saying, yeah, I want to pay for services that I want to use and I don't want to pay for services that I don't want to use. The Catalonians think that they are being unfairly taxed by Madrid. They do not feel like they are being represented adequately for that taxation and so I say, hey guys, you should be able to opt out and you shouldn't have to pay your taxes to Madrid. It's beautiful. So I have a question, a serious question, to anybody that disagrees, that thinks secession shouldn't be allowed to work like that. You would have to take the position that central governments are the ones that determine whether or not a group of people can secede. So my question to you is this, by what authority do you invoke? To say you or this group of people that I deem worthy are the individuals who have the authority to determine the political structure of others, even if those other people would, on their own free volition, choose an alternative political structure. By what authority can you make such a judgment? I think everybody agrees that at some point you have to agree with the principle of secession. There is some circumstance in which I think every single person would support the idea of illegal, let's say, secession or secession that goes against the claims of the central power. So imagine you've got this gigantic super state of the Soviet Union, which if you're in Ukraine, you are literally undergoing mass starvation because the central government of the Soviet Union is forcefully taking your grain, taking your wheat, shipping it off to Moscow for them to centrally distribute. You don't keep enough of it and your people are literally dying. Do you then support the right of the Ukrainians to say screw off Soviet Union? We're going to form our own political structure so that we quit starving to death. If that's not enough, of course we can just keep ramping up the stakes. Imagine that in some political structure you've got, let's say, five million Jews and the majority within the political structure says, hey, you know what? We're going to start killing Jews in this location. And the Jews say, no, we're going to secede. Your supposed political authority is no good here anymore. We're obviously not being represented, so we're not going to pay taxes for our own destruction. Surely everybody can agree with that type of secession. So if we agree on the principle then that at some point individuals have a right to govern themselves, my question is where do you draw the line? Do you say, oh, well, when it's an ethical problem like the Holocaust, then you can do such a thing? Or is there some economic threshold? Where do you say this is the line in the sand where people can legitimately govern themselves versus no, they actually can't? I have heard some individuals in Madrid make the argument that, oh, Catalonian secession goes against the Spanish constitution. I think this is a very funny argument. The Catalonians are essentially saying the Spanish constitution has not given rise to a political structure that we like or that represents us. So the response of the people in power is to say, oh, but according to this document, the Spanish constitution, the Spanish constitution says, oh, you don't have the right to choose your political structure. That's what the document says. Sorry, guys. I have a feeling that there's not many Catalonians that find that argument very persuasive. All right. So I'm going to take this idea and push it to the extreme because philosophy demands consistency. And if you apply this idea consistently, I think you get some pretty extreme conclusions, at least extreme in regard to how most people think, not extreme as in it's some bad idea. So I think this can be a very uncontroversial way to reduce the scope and power of central governments to say that as a general rule, if there is some political disagreement that can't be resolved and some group insists that they're not being represented, they have every right to secede. So where then do I draw that line? Am I saying that every group of 15 people should be able to opt out of their local government and form their own government? And my answer is no, it's more radical than that. My claim is this is actually a human right that goes down to the individual level. My ideal political system would be one that says every single service of government you can secede from, you can opt out of. That includes trash collection. That includes the construction of roads. But of course these all come with the caveat that if you don't pay for the construction of roads, you then can't use the roads. But I really see this principle of secession going all the way down to the individual. That's the only place philosophically where it strikes me as consistent. Where I can say yes, nobody else on planet Earth has the right to say you, listener of Patterson Pursuit, you only have the right to govern yourself if somebody else says you have that right. That you have to be given permission to govern yourself by some other group of self-appointed individuals. That because of the geography of your birth, you actually don't have the same types of rights as those individuals making the laws. That strikes me as a very monarchical and old way of thinking about politics. I have yet to encounter anybody in my travels around the world and my time spent as an intern on the hill in DC interacting with a bunch of congresspeople. I've yet to find anybody who I'd say, that person should be the one determining whether or not other people can govern themselves. That guy has the kind of metaphysical essence which makes him above everybody else. And he can say, you know what? Do the Catalonians have a right to govern themselves as they see fit? I'm going to say no. Or I'm going to say yes. I've never met anybody like that. Even the Pope. Of course I've never met the Pope. But I wouldn't want the Pope to have that kind of power. And of course historically speaking, the Pope had quite a deal of political power and I don't think that was for the better. I do think interestingly we're in a transitionary period in 2017. I hope we see lots more independence referendums. I think with access to the internet, with access to free communication which is naturally kind of more individualistic and cuts at the authority of many of these lying politicians who don't have the well-being of their constituency at heart, I think we are beginning to see cracks around modern political structure of the nation-state. I could see a very plausible future in which maybe we don't have individual anarchism. Maybe we'll get there in the long run. But where you have city-states essentially, where let's say the people in New York City or the people in San Francisco or Los Angeles are so fed up with the way that Washington D.C. tries to govern 350 million people, that it says screw it, I'm not going to follow their laws, I'm going to do my own thing. We're going to govern ourselves at a more local level. Just think about how in the United States, there are states now, whole states, that are completely disregarding the medical marijuana laws that come from the feds. I think this is a wonderful thing. Colorado has given the middle finger to the rulers and to the supposed authority and legitimacy of the authority of the federal government. And I think it's beautiful. I wish other states would do that with all kinds of issues. Just say, hey, look, we're going to do our own thing. You D.C. politicians, you make your little laws, you write your little rules, and we're going to do our own thing. I would love to see it and I'd love to see it in Catalonia. They say, okay, Madrid, you write your little laws, you write your little rules, that's fine. We're going to govern ourselves. I think that would be beautiful. I think that would be a better system. I think it would solve just a trillion political problems around the world, because you would have much more homogenous groups of people that are able to create governments that they want. You would have competition amongst governments, just like it's good to have many car manufacturers that are trying to do different things to satisfy their customers. I think we should have many different types of governance, where people in politics are trying to do different things to satisfy their constituency at a small scale. And when you have success with, let's say, low taxes in some district, works really well, businessmen and consumers benefit, other small geographic political areas can then adopt those policies and say, hey, it worked there. Free markets worked in Hong Kong, it worked in Singapore, let's try it here. And I think in general, it's kind of a one-to-one correlation. So the smaller the political structure, I think the better, and the bigger the political structure, I think the worse. So imagine that we had, instead of one set of laws for the 50 states, imagine you had one set of laws for all of North America. So though the people from Mexico have different values, different language, different expectations, different culture, different economic needs and desires, imagine we all had to follow one set of laws. And then now all the Western Hemisphere. Right, imagine we had one set of laws for how individuals are allowed to behave for the whole globe. I mean, that would be a dystopia, right? Books have been written about this to try to play out the idea of the scary one-world government. So on the most extreme end of the spectrum, you have, let's have one government for the whole world, which I think is probably the worst idea ever. The other end of the spectrum, you have my ideal solution, which is let's have every single individual on the planet be able to choose his own political structure and be able to opt out, regardless of the geography of his birth. Now I know I said this before, but I'm going to say it again. I am really genuinely excited about the idea of secession becoming popular, because I think it has the ability to unify people who are in completely opposite ends in the political spectrum. It's one of the beautiful things about libertarianism and freedom in general. You and I can totally disagree. We can still live within the same political structure peacefully. But what other political solution will have farmers living in Kansas agree with bankers living on Wall Street who will agree with people living in Hollywood who will agree with people living in inner city Detroit? To say, hey, hey, hey, I know we all disagree. I know a lot of these people, we don't even like each other. We don't like each other culturally. We don't respect one another. But how's this for a political solution? You guys in Hollywood, govern yourselves. You guys in Kansas, you govern yourselves. You guys in New York, you govern yourselves. And let's not all try to force our political structure on one another. Let's respect that different groups of people have different ideas, they have different needs, and they want different governmental rules. Now, if that idea were to take hold, which I think it has the possibility of doing, I think it would literally solve 90% of all political problems in the country, and not just this country, of course, all over the world. I'm sure rural Frenchmen feel the same way about their government as rural Americans do. I'm confident, based on the Brexit vote, that people in London feel very differently about big government than people in rural England. And both groups think very, very poorly of each other. So this is it, guys. You can phrase it in such an exciting way. It's so obvious. Once you grasp this idea, we can let people make their own free decisions. I feel like, man, this can just catch on like wildfire. Are you tired of politics? Yes. Are the Catalonians tired of politics? Yes. Secession is the way to get there. So that's my thoughts. Not only is it immensely practical, I think it's moral, and I think it should be seen as the default way that we resolve political problems. I find it highly dubious to think that there's some group of enlightened folk out there who are so intelligent, who should have the legitimate authority to determine whether or not you and your community should have the individual right to govern yourself as you see fit. But that's my thoughts. Let me know if it's your thoughts. Let me know if you think I'm totally off base. If you remember, this was a similar conversation I had with Dr. Bruce Kane out at Stanford, which was a little bit of a tense conversation, but a good one. If you really enjoyed this, you can become a patron of Patterson in Pursuit and my work in general enjoying the other 90 patrons at patreon.com slash Steve Patterson. Every dollar makes a difference, and make sure to share these ideas with your friends. Of course, you can share the link to this episode. That'd be great. But grasp these ideas if you agree with them and find a way to communicate them to people who you totally disagree with. And I bet you will find there's inroads that you can make. This idea has legs. All right, that's all for me this week. I should have a pretty kickin' series of interviews coming up for you over the next few weeks. Make sure to tune in, and I'll talk to you guys next week.