Ignoring the massive cost, legal hurdles, and the opinion of the residents/government/outside powers, if you could magically grant independence to certain territories or form new bigger nations from existing ones with no repercussions to yourself, what new countries would you create?

Please treat this as a non-serious post, let’s not get into a massive political debate, those never end well.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Kurdistan. They have been broken up, and are a nation spread over a number of countries that all hate them: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

    • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 hour ago

      In the same vein, Catalonia. The “principality" for sure, with Northern Catalonia (currently in France) and the western strip (currently in Aragon, Spain), with or without Aran (if we can decide our future so should they, though an independent Occitaine is probably a pipe dream, so I’d be partial to a confederation if it’s fine by them), open to a confederation with the rest of the Catalan Countries (Andorra, the Balearic Islands and Valencia) if it’s fine by them; the people in L’Alguer (currently in Sardinia, Italy) should be able to decide if and where they want to fit in.

      Also Scotland, though they’re not split.

      Any nation without a state that wants to have one (and would have the means to survive as one, but there are some pretty small states out there and most of the ones that aren’t sinking under the sea seem to be doing fine), really.

    • amorangi@lemmy.nz
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      3 hours ago

      They Northern states would have been better off in the long run if they’d have just left the retard states break away in the civil war.

  • 「黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui」@sh.itjust.works
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    9 hours ago

    This is site is gonna be western-centric so I’d not even bother with those countries:

    So my answer is:

    Hong Kong, Vietnam, Guangdong Province become one nation

    Republic of Yue (粵共和國)

    Historically we came from a common group of people… so… this make sense lol

    A lot of Vietnamese words are similar to Cantonese.

    So we just make this a dual-language nation of Cantonese + Vietnamese (plus we’d give protected status for minority languages/“dialects” and allow schools in their regions to use 50% of the time to use their language/“dialect” only, the other 50% they have to pick either Cantonese or Vietnamese as the main language, and also the other one become their sort of like “minor” language studies in college terms… so this de facto means the Northern part of this nation use Cantonese, Southern part use Vietnamese as the main one…

    So someone running for president of the Republic of Yue is legally required to pass fluency test in both national languages to make sure people are united…

    Oh fun fact: the 粵 Chinese character (as in 粵語/Cantonese) representing Guangzhou and Cantonese related words, and the 越 Chinese character in 越南 (Vietnam) are pronounced the exact same in both Cantonese and Mandarin.

    Anyways… I’m gonna tag my favorite HKer on Lemmy @NorthWestWind@lemmy.world

    Hope you’d enjoy living in our Republic of Yue fantasy where Cantonese is a national language for once (can you imagine if Cantonese won the debate to become China’s official language? 🥹)

    /non-serious of course… but this would be a very funny country… imagine Cantopop with Vietnamese sprinkled inside? lolol

  • wraekscadu@vargar.org
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    11 hours ago

    How about the concept of a nation itself ceases to exist? How about free movement of people, very weak states, consumer cooperatives as the only capital controlling entities who are allowed to buy labor only from worker coops? Economic democracy, competition, choice and so on?

    How about a world without kings and non consented rulers, a world where we stop wanting to conquer each other, and instead focus on conquering the limits set on us by nature? How about a world where we build a Dyson swarm, solve interplanetary, interstellar, and dare I say intergalactic travel?

    Aight imma go cry myself to sleep now

    • blarghly@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      consumer cooperatives as the only capital controlling entities who are allowed to buy labor only from worker coops

      Who would enforce this?

    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      If there are no nation-states, how do we determine what amount of force is justified for self defense? Who enforces violations of that rule and what are the available punishments? What is our recourse when said enforcers decide to ignore any violence against people who deleted their reddit accounts?

      Anarchy is a great ideal, but there are some things governments do that we shouldn’t trust to self-organizing collectives. Unless “union of transphobic gang rapists pedophiles” is something you want to defend.

      (Bit snarky, but honestly curious as to your answer.)

      • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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        7 hours ago

        Anarchy is a great ideal, but there are some things governments do that we shouldn’t trust to self-organizing collectives.

        What makes states more trustworthy than self-organizing collectives?

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          What stops a self-organizing collective from becoming racist, sexist, transohobic, and pro-rape?

          I doubt you or I or anyone else here would join such a collective, but what would be our recourse when one forms and rapes my son or lynches your daughter?

          Modern states at least have the benefit of a basic theory that they cannot simply un-person people who live within their borders. I dont see what the ewuivalenf mechabism would be to encourage a self-organized collective from doing so.

      • wraekscadu@vargar.org
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        9 hours ago

        That’s why I didn’t propose an anarchist vision. I do recognize the need for states. Just very very weak ones.

        Nation states are a different case altogether though. You can have a multinational state. Sure, it is easier for a state to continue existing if the landmass it controls identifies as a single nation. That helps give it legitimacy.

        I’d recommend reading more about nation states and why nations ≠ states.

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          In common English nation, state, and nation-state are near-synonyms for the collectives created by people which exercise ultimate authortiy to enforce rules on conduct within a geographic area, with some variation due to the nominclature used by said collectives for their various subdivisions.

          I’m not sealioning. I’d love to read either an actual answer to my questions, a treatise on your “non-anarchist” idea, or even just a passionate rant about terminology.

          But quibbling over vocabulary instead of answering questions, without even offering a single link or reference and instead just saying " do your own reading", is simply bad form.

          We’re here on social media, and if you don’t want to have a discussion silence is always acceptable.

          • wraekscadu@vargar.org
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            6 hours ago

            My bad. I incorrectly assumed that the above terminologies were common knowledge. I should’ve provided direct links. Well, here they are:

            Difference between nations and states

            Definition of a “nation-state”

            When I talk about nations and states, I talk from the perspective of these definitions. As you can see, they’re not really synonyms. It’s not squabbling about terminologies. If we have a different understanding of what different words mean, then our logical arguments are going to look very different. I’m not saying that your definition is wrong or whatever. I’m just clarifying how I define these terms in my arguments. That way, you can understand what I mean to say.

            As for the “questions” you posed… I’m not sure exactly what answers you want me to provide. I already told you that I do believe that states need to exist. We’re in agreement there. I just don’t think that it’s healthy for society to divide itself among different nations. Seems quite a waste of mental space, resources, etc. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

            • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              (Apology accepted. Sorry if I was painfully American)

              The (very British) definition of “nation” you used isn’t at all sensible with what the OP asked. To use meriam-Webster’s definition as a guide, you meant definition 1.a.1, but there are six other listed definitions.

              https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation

              That being said, a “nationality’ (meaning the same thing you called a” nation") will inevitably arise within any soverign state (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state, meaning 5.a) which persists for a long enough time. The most obvious example perhaps being my own country, in which a distinct “american” /nationality arose after our civil war, although the distnct non-British nationalities of “Canadian” and “Australian” in those respective countries would also be excellent examples. (As would “british” itself.)


              While we’re on odd meanings of words, it’s probably worth mentioning that “race” is an archaic synonym for the same idea, although that usage fell out of common usage some time after the establishment of chattel slavery based on skin color.)

  • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Every country is broken down one step. Individual states or provinces are now their own country. If still too large, break into counties or the like.

    Whack it with a hammer! Break them up!