remember how the Texas grid nearly collapsed last winter? that was at least partially because it isn't sufficiently interconnected with the rest of the North American power grids (primarily so they can avoid muh big government regulation). it didn't, and still doesn't, have enough power generation capacity to compensate for surges in load (i.e. a bunch of people suddenly need electric heating in an area where they usually don't), and they couldn't rely on the rest of the country's grid to supplement.
Some states are net energy exporters to the grid, and others are net importers.
Assuming that state lines don't break down along with state apparatus (whih is a big "if"), then that should give you an idea of who will be okay and who will be in trouble when the lines are cut.
You're assuming that everything will be cut along state lines. It won't, look up "American Nations" to find out why- and also why Texas would be extra fucked.
If a state produces more power than it uses, it will mostly be okay if the lines are cut, assuming the people there continue to operate on a state level. But the lines will probably cut at a very short distance, likely wherever the culture changes, wherever the radius of "people like us" ends (3 Californias, upstate vs downstate NY, east and west PA, north/south FL, north/south IL, lots of different regions in Texas).
It's possible that states (or groups of states) that are culturally homogeneous enough, and also net energy exporters, might reconfigure a grid on the fly that would be better than Texas'.
But take this "cutting the power lines by local boundary" concept, and apply it to all resources. It'd be a shit show. That's why I think it's more likely that people would start to get used to doing a lot more things locally, and then re-constitute regional polities.
You don't need to read the book to understand the point I'm making, but you do need to at least open it to make a critique. Sure, the author is a lib, and argues on a bunch of lib bases, but he still emphasizes how social relations are more important than political divisions, and points in the direction of understanding history this way.
Charlotte and Asheville differ more in their historical and economic foundations and class structure than do Charlotte and Montgomery. The mixed-European immigrant areas mostly stop at the Great Plains, where smallholder farmers weren't viable. El Paso and Waco might both be Texas, but they have little to do with each other.
State lines are idealism; in America we made arbitrary rectilinear boundaries that fly in the face of geographic, sociological, and economic reality.
For another example, I am quite certain that Washington and Oregon would not stay intact after a collapse scenario. They would each promptly split along the Cascades, and very soon the reactionaries in the east would be trying to invade Seattle and Portland to get access to goods from the global market, which they would otherwise run out of.
You're criticizing my analysis of being non-materialist while saying that "America will split along these straight lines on a map" which is much further from a materialist analysis.
Literally every single country has these divisions and they’ve held together just fine.
No, there is definitely a difference between countries that got their national and subnational boundaries from rapid colonial forces (most of North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia), and those that developed theirs slower. Mali and Iraq, 2 examples of non-Western countries with straight-line colonial borders, are not "holding together just fine" the way that Iran or Vietnam or Lesotho are.
IF state borders ceased to exist, you’d probably be right that the new borders would not be the same as the old.
OK that was the pith of the argument.
But you’re expecting the ruling class to play a passive role in all of this.
They're letting the federal government collapse, but for some reason they're not letting the state government collapse? That's kind of odd. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if my memory is right, you have posted before about living in a state that happens to have a rather dysfunctional state government. I can relate.
remember how the Texas grid nearly collapsed last winter? that was at least partially because it isn't sufficiently interconnected with the rest of the North American power grids (primarily so they can avoid muh big government regulation). it didn't, and still doesn't, have enough power generation capacity to compensate for surges in load (i.e. a bunch of people suddenly need electric heating in an area where they usually don't), and they couldn't rely on the rest of the country's grid to supplement.
tl;dr the bigger the grid the better
deleted by creator
Some states are net energy exporters to the grid, and others are net importers.
Assuming that state lines don't break down along with state apparatus (whih is a big "if"), then that should give you an idea of who will be okay and who will be in trouble when the lines are cut.
deleted by creator
You're assuming that everything will be cut along state lines. It won't, look up "American Nations" to find out why- and also why Texas would be extra fucked.
If a state produces more power than it uses, it will mostly be okay if the lines are cut, assuming the people there continue to operate on a state level. But the lines will probably cut at a very short distance, likely wherever the culture changes, wherever the radius of "people like us" ends (3 Californias, upstate vs downstate NY, east and west PA, north/south FL, north/south IL, lots of different regions in Texas).
It's possible that states (or groups of states) that are culturally homogeneous enough, and also net energy exporters, might reconfigure a grid on the fly that would be better than Texas'.
But take this "cutting the power lines by local boundary" concept, and apply it to all resources. It'd be a shit show. That's why I think it's more likely that people would start to get used to doing a lot more things locally, and then re-constitute regional polities.
deleted by creator
You don't need to read the book to understand the point I'm making, but you do need to at least open it to make a critique. Sure, the author is a lib, and argues on a bunch of lib bases, but he still emphasizes how social relations are more important than political divisions, and points in the direction of understanding history this way.
Charlotte and Asheville differ more in their historical and economic foundations and class structure than do Charlotte and Montgomery. The mixed-European immigrant areas mostly stop at the Great Plains, where smallholder farmers weren't viable. El Paso and Waco might both be Texas, but they have little to do with each other.
State lines are idealism; in America we made arbitrary rectilinear boundaries that fly in the face of geographic, sociological, and economic reality.
For another example, I am quite certain that Washington and Oregon would not stay intact after a collapse scenario. They would each promptly split along the Cascades, and very soon the reactionaries in the east would be trying to invade Seattle and Portland to get access to goods from the global market, which they would otherwise run out of.
deleted by creator
You're criticizing my analysis of being non-materialist while saying that "America will split along these straight lines on a map" which is much further from a materialist analysis.
No, there is definitely a difference between countries that got their national and subnational boundaries from rapid colonial forces (most of North America, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia), and those that developed theirs slower. Mali and Iraq, 2 examples of non-Western countries with straight-line colonial borders, are not "holding together just fine" the way that Iran or Vietnam or Lesotho are.
OK that was the pith of the argument.
They're letting the federal government collapse, but for some reason they're not letting the state government collapse? That's kind of odd. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if my memory is right, you have posted before about living in a state that happens to have a rather dysfunctional state government. I can relate.