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Nov 13Liked by Michael Magoon

Fantastic proposal. As you admit, it may not be reasonably likely to ever happen, but we should continue to explore the possibilities. You should send this to Elon Musk and JD.

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Nov 13·edited Nov 13Author

Thanks for your support.

I wish that I could get this article in front of them. My guess is that they have not even thought about this possibility. Federal dominance in domestic affairs is for all practical purposes now bipartisan.

I am skeptical about whether Trump's "Department of Government Efficiency" plan will actually make much of a difference. Inefficiency is not the real problem; it is over-centralization. Let the states worry about government efficiency for domestic programs.

I think Vivek Ramaswamy would immediately see the promise of my proposal though.

To make this happen, I think that the proposal would need to be a keystone of a Presidential campaign agenda so it is clear that the American people have given the President a mandate to implement these sweeping reforms.

So it is too late for 2025. Maybe 2029...

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Worth thinking about.

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Note also that in your paragraph towards the end that starts with "My proposal would allow", you mean to say California and Texas might 'secede', not 'succeed'.

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Thanks. I was battling against spell-checking through that entire section. I guess spell-check won!

It is corrected now.

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Overall decentralization is a good idea. It would move more of the corruption from Washington to the state capitols where it should be easier to observe and counter. The next step would be to publicly finance elections -- you never want decisionmakers to raise money from those they are making decisions about. That's why corporate purchasing agents cannot accept gifts from suppliers.

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Your problem remains the same one we face on abortion. This was a simple solution to that problem - let the people rule themselves. What do you do with people who are unwilling to leave well enough alone and let others under the federal umbrella have their own sets of laws?

It worked so well with slavery, for instance. Couldn't leave well enough alone to die out on its own, so we had to kill three quarters of a million men to create essentially the same system under another name after the war.

The progress on the abortion issue has been pretty amazing since it was freed from the strictures of Roe, with measures passing in very unusual places guaranteeing that very right. Give culture more time, and it'll ultimately reunify the body politic on this point. But will the forces of authoritarian control give it that time? And will they leave well enough alone on every other issue?

I am not optimistic.

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