
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
I think a preference for the status quo has to weigh in to some extent.
All else being equal, sure, I agree with the “any group large enough that it isn’t ludicrous on its face has a right to self-determination” standard.
But all else is almost never equal. Someone wants to secede and someone else wants to conquer—and all of that is enormously disruptive to many other someones.
So I think there’s an immediately obvious utilitarian bias towards the status quo of, oh, the last decade or so. Governments are heavy, complicated things, and I think a group who wants to disrupt that needs to make an affirmative argument based on something other than “self determination” that this is a good idea and all the disruption is worth it for the sake of things being better in the long run.
Which unfortunately gets us nowhere because it brings us right back to debates about culture and history etc.
4.8
123123 ratings
I think a preference for the status quo has to weigh in to some extent.
All else being equal, sure, I agree with the “any group large enough that it isn’t ludicrous on its face has a right to self-determination” standard.
But all else is almost never equal. Someone wants to secede and someone else wants to conquer—and all of that is enormously disruptive to many other someones.
So I think there’s an immediately obvious utilitarian bias towards the status quo of, oh, the last decade or so. Governments are heavy, complicated things, and I think a group who wants to disrupt that needs to make an affirmative argument based on something other than “self determination” that this is a good idea and all the disruption is worth it for the sake of things being better in the long run.
Which unfortunately gets us nowhere because it brings us right back to debates about culture and history etc.
4,217 Listeners
13,362 Listeners
26,420 Listeners
2,387 Listeners
87 Listeners
3,758 Listeners
87 Listeners
390 Listeners
128 Listeners
199 Listeners
47 Listeners
91 Listeners
75 Listeners
145 Listeners
114 Listeners