/post#cm5o0k23

North American Union thoughts?

This idea seems ridiculous at first glance, like some sort of troll. But I'm actually beginning to see some advantages, and it might not seem as ridiculous as people suggest.

- puts an enormous amount of natural and human resources into a single economic and political bloc
- opens the door to fixing the awful US healthcare system
- instantly solves illegal immigration issues (hey we're all Americans now!)
- allows for better exploiting and hardening of the Arctic (the West is severely lagging behind Russia here)
- completely impervious to invasion and military conquest

What are your thoughts? Obvious downside is loss of sovereignty, but this could be fixed by allowing more regional autonomy, which the US was historically good at in the past. This seems more like an implementation detail.

1d|

Anonymous

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14 comments

US - 341,963,408 pop 50 states - 6.84 million pop/state
2 senators / state
1 hor / 786,000

Canada - 37,943,231 pop / 6.84 million pop/state
6 states
12 senators
49 house of representatives

Mexico - 130,207,371 / 6.84 million pop/state
19 states
38 senators
166 members of the house of representatives

Old system:
50 states
100 senators
435 representatives

New system:
75 states
150 senators
650 representatives
800 electoral votes
good idea

1d|

Anonymous

> opens the door to fixing the awful US healthcare system

What's to say that wouldn't just spread to Mexico and Canada, instead of the US being "fixed"?

Besides, you'd find it very hard to find any Canadians or Mexicans who'd be up for this. Seems like a lose-lose scenario for those folks, barely any upsides compared to how things are today.

So while people from the US might want this in order to fix their country, I'm not sure other countries want their own country worse off just to help the poor USAians.

1d|

Anonymous

arguably, USMCA and before that NAFTA have followed parallel development tracks as nascent EU movements form the post-ww2 period. a larger union makes sense, especially as NA is mostly a free trade area with visa free travel already (sort of). the 21st century reality has billion+ pop behemoth countries and meanwhile small countries of only a hundred million population will disappear economically beneath the scale of much much larger societies. all together the enter 'West' is about 1 Billion people. if they all formed a super-federation of democratic states, we could have, like 150 states, 300 senators, and 1300 members of the house of representatives. a 'West'ern nation governed by a federal republic, on the basis of representative democracy and constitutional protections has proven to be an effective modern innovation in allowing like-minded states to coexist in peaceful governance. the system can grow and it should grow. small countries and large countries both prefer legacy ideas, however what you call a thing does not change the thing--we would all benefit from a larger national cooperation between all Western nations and people, and the hard problems of our differences are an opportunity to change the world for a better, not something to be feared or avoided.

1d|

Anonymous

That's a lot of text for saying so little... In short, because the countries are independent from each other, they managed to work up agreements that benefit both parties.

Instead you want to make it so the countries can't make those anymore? Again, you'd have a hard time convincing the residents of Mexico and Canada to make things worse in order for the US to get proper healthcare.

1d|

Anonymous

healthcare is a trivial problem. the US system is fubar due to political division. enlarging the union dilutes the division. clearly, national service should compete with private service. monopoly by either is abusive.

24h|

Anonymous

Continue this thread →

Nothing a few NGOs and a well-timed political scandal or two can't fix. Give us a few years to educate people, and they'll clearly see its in their best interests. 😉

24h|

Anonymous

What about a division into smaller regions? California is big enough to be a country. New England is a big ideologically aligned bloc, etc

23h|

Anonymous

One of the interesting parts of the NAU idea is that it would necessitate stronger regional autonomy, simply due to the scale. So yes, I agree and I think growing bigger is a way to accomplish this.

23h|

Anonymous

some problmes you cannot solve by throwing more money at them

feel like apply that to this issue

23h|

Anonymous

Don't take away the right of a USAian to believe that they can remove problems by throwing more money at them! How dare you?!

23h|

Anonymous

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