Alaska a good candidate for Secession.

[Chosen]

It seems to me that Alaska has the best argument to make for secession. With all of its natural resources, it's independent spirit and geography it could do much better on its own than in the service of a Federal Government which mocks it incessantly.

Alaska would be able to drill for oil, retain its natural gas reserves and other abundant natural resources. I think it would become a vibrant country. I see no real reason it should suffer subjugation under the taxation and stranglehold of federal tyranny any longer.

Do you think this would succeed?

Do they have the right economic factors in place to sustain separation?

My thoughts are that they have the best conditions of all the states to have an immediate successful secession.

[nate895]

They have a rather active secessionist party, and they even elected a secessionist candidate for governor in the early 90s, but he apparently ignored that part of the platform.

[Chosen]

Seems like the Republicans spent a great deal of effort infiltrating and derailing his efforts. I think that along with these secessionist ideas, there needs to be original doctrine and philosophy to succeed. Not just reactionary cause and effect.

I think in todays world economy, Alaska would do really well. Especially selling their resources on an open market with proceeds coming back to them and not the federal government. They already have their own culture, maybe they just need to begin by minting their own currency.

[nate895]

Seems like the Republicans spent a great deal of effort infiltrating and derailing his efforts. I think that along with these secessionist ideas, there needs to be original doctrine and philosophy to succeed. Not just reactionary cause and effect.

I think in todays world economy, Alaska would do really well. Especially selling their resources on an open market with proceeds coming back to them and not the federal government. They already have their own culture, maybe they just need to begin by minting their own currency.

I believe so as well. I think Alaska could be full of rich people if it was its own country. They have more oil than the state knows what to do with, a fishing industry, and they also have many resources to mine, including gold.

[asimplegirl]

Well, I heard a few times about us and Texas possibly seceding...and we'd have some good resources together.

[Pauls' Revere]

I am reading this article regarding the Size of Nations from Tufts University. It is interesting to note that they state smaller nations have bigger governments due to lack of econonies of scale to spread expenses per capita. Buy smaller nations in this case they mean small in population according to that measure. It got me thinking about how really is the appropriate way to measure the ratios of taxes, demographics, resources, future trends and needs, in short sustainability and economic survival for any nation, let alone one which secedes. There are formulas in it to if your into those. Hope you enjoy and that it helps the future Republic of Alaska
http://www.tufts.edu/~espola01/oxford.pdf

from article: a tidbit of what it reads like...

3 Benefits and costs of national size.

When considering the equilibrium size of nations, a natural starting point is the
trade-off between benefits and costs from a larger size. There are several benefits
from a larger national size. A key role for nations is the provision of a set of
public goods to their citizens. The per capita cost of many public goods is lower
in larger countries, where more taxpayers pay for them. Economies of scale can
be expected in the provision of general-policy coordination and administration,
defense and foreign policy, a legal and judicial system, police and crime prevention,
a monetary and financial system, infrastructure for communications,
public health, and so on. Empirically, the share of government spending over
GDP is decreasing in population (smaller countries have larger governments)

[Chosen]

That is an odd report. It seems to contradict itself.


As countries become larger, administrative and
congestion costs may overcome the benefits of size mentioned above. More im-
portantly, larger populations are associated with higher heterogeneity of pref-
erences of different individuals. Being part of the same country implies sharing
jointly-supplied public goods and policies in ways that cannot satisfy every-
body’s preferences. Decentralization of some public goods and policies can offer
a partial response to such heterogeneity. The current move towards decentral-
ization in many parts of the world has been partly explained as a response to
increasing secessionist pressures.

It goes on to state:

Nonetheless, some essential national policies
that characterize a sovereign state (defense, foreign policy, basic characteristics
of the legal system) are indivisible and must be shared among the whole pop-
ulation. The costs of heterogeneity in the population have been documented
empirically in a recent literature on the political and economic effects of ethno-
linguistic fractionalization, which is shown to be inversely related to measures
of economic performance, economic freedom, and quality of government.14 As
noted by Wittman (2000), such political costs are likely to depend not only on
the degree of heterogeneity of preferences, but also on the quality of institutions
through which preferences are mediated and turned into policy.


The basic premise is that larger entities have greater heterogeneity. This is problematic in maintaining institutions which require unified focus and belief, such as defense etc. The solution proposed is that selection of goods meet the "amount" of heterogeneity in the society. This is quite a ridiculous notion. Imagine a governmental entity trying to allow for massive heterogeneity in an open market, while forcibly instituting commonality for the maintenance of soveriegn institutions? Ultimately, the same institutions which protect the market system!? This report seems to be a bit reactionary.

The reality is that a smaller society has more direct and responsive democratic institutions. Common culture makes for a much more vibrant free market. This way goods are not tied to people and origin, a sort of slavery of identity which this paper seems to endorse.

The argument isn't made correctly here that a smaller population would have a larger government. Than what? I would say that a government becomes larger when the market provides less. In a state like Alaska, the market would be vibrant as it would not have to lose its goods without reaping their benefits.

It is really more about public debt, weak external debt and poor currency.

What has to happen is that if a society can produce a great amount of the goods it uses, in other words instead of producing a narrow range than requiring a broad range of goods, it will be fine. Most of these types of studies are pro IMF expansionist, and typically look at small nations. Many of which are in huge debt and participate in dependent trade. The goods the need to function must come from elsewhere. IE Caribbean countries, African nations etc. Alaska does not have this problem, in fact it is in the inverse. It has a majority of goods that large nations require, this is very important. The smaller states which are studied in the above report and in other studies do not have this luxury. Further, Alaska can sustain in migration and industrial development. Governments shrink when dependencies do.

[ryanduff]

It seems to me that Alaska has the best argument to make for secession. With all of its natural resources, it's independent spirit and geography it could do much better on its own than in the service of a Federal Government which mocks it incessantly.

And therein lies the problem. They have too many natural resources and too few people spread out over a large area. The federal government would never let that slip through their fingers. Even if it meant blowing up a few million people so it could keep access to those resources.

[orafi]

And therein lies the problem. They have too many natural resources and too few people spread out over a large area. The federal government would never let that slip through their fingers. Even if it meant blowing up a few million people so it could keep access to those resources.

if they even tried that, they would have to deal with an all out civil war.

[Chosen]

I think you are right about the Fed's resistance to it. I am sure it would be on par with Lincoln's reaction. The Federal government knows it could never win a violent confrontation with Alaskans in the public sphere. World opinion would destroy them.

But the single non-violent assertion of secession would draw millions to Alaska as well.

For secession to be successful, Alaska would of course have to muster external support, which given the current political conditions would not be hard to obtain. Alaska in my opinion is the South Carolina of our times, with probably some of the best moral ground ever to stand on. Obviously the federal government and their media hit men have nothing but disdain for Alaskan people-look what they did to Palin. Alaska is unique and should be allowed to have prosperity and freedom for their own people. It is quite absurd to think that a McCain-Obama zealot would have any care for Alaska or its people and these are the helmsmen of our federal machine.

Besides, if the federal government became murderous and violent in their greed to continue to steal and exploit Alaska by violently engaging them, who would you wager on? An Obama royalist or an Alaskan Partisan?