ShadenLines 2024-08-23 20:32:06

Really? Up til now, all I knew was that metal itself originally started in England...Black Sabbath & all that.

I'm not originally from Floridastan but have lived here for a few years now. I started out as one of the millions of refugees from California. It's one of the most badly governed states we have! People will toss out the statistic "5th largest economy in the world", which is true. However its economy has slowly been hollowing out since the mid-2010's...businesses have been moving to Texas & Florida since both are friendlier. No state income taxes, less burdensome & more sensible regulations overall. Tesla pulled its main factory out not long ago. What keeps CA going is the titans of Big Tech (Google, etc.), its universities, federal gov't contracts & in the southern part, Big Ag...where illegal immigrants work on the vast fruit & nut plantations until they're too old & crippled to do it anymore, like medieval serfs.

ShadenLines 2024-08-24 11:20:12

You think big, I'll give you that!... But seriously, depending on how things go in the next few decades, you might get your wish in some fashion. Check it out:

My crystal ball is cloudy as always; however one of the clear trends is that most governments are having a harder time controlling their territories now. Communications technology has a lot to do with it. Look at China: it's the most notorious police state (besides North Korea), the strongest one, & even sealed off its electronic infrastructure with the "Great Firewall"--which a great many of its people bypass with VPNs. In election years, American candidates' computers (& those of their staff) get hacked, meaning even the fedgov with all its resources cannot guarantee data security here. Trump's campaign recently got cracked into, probably by guys working for Iran. We know that Russia is still trying to influence voting demographics here; Putin's regime will get better at it as the years go by.

2nd trend: There's been an uptick of secessionism in a few different parts of the world. It is most obvious in Africa, where most governments are weak & their militaries disorganized & often fragmented. The US is not immune; in northern California there has long been an underground sentiment to either break off from CentCal & SoCal, or secede from the US & merge with the coast above it, that is, coastal Washington & Canada. The latter idea is called "Cascadia"...while it's not happening politically, economically it's at least halfway emerged. The cities in the northwest coastal belt are already more connected to each other than to cities & towns within their own respective states/province. Even if none of Brasilia's states ever secede, depending on how well or badly the government performs, some of your cities may well merge with those nearby & function as de facto city-states. At that point, the central government would act like it controls the country even while most people would know otherwise...& say nothing.