Originally Posted by Aries Walker
(Post 10125106)
The scenario is that the federal government split up, not the society or culture. We have 50 perfectly good state governments, already in place, each with their own Constitutions, and executive, legislative, and judicial branches. They also each have their own National Guard. Utilities (which already cross national borders) would keep operating, as would most factories, farms, shipyards, highways, and businesses. The main things which would need to be constructed out of the wreckage of the US Federal Government would be the taxes, the military, and the State and Commerce Departments to handle international relations and trade.
But wait, why are we even conjecturing? We have a recently historical model of almost exactly this situation occurring, with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Their nation lost superpower status and was an unmitigated mess for a while, but were there instant wars between the former Soviet states? Nope. Riots, starvation, anarchic bandit kingdoms? Only some. Did it devolve into a giant post-apocalyptic nightmarish wasteland hellscape? Not at all.
The US is like Europe, except that (because of, among other things, our brilliant Founding Fathers) we are what they can't be - unified. There are 46 nations in Europe; imagine if they tried to form a single government. Now imagine the same thing about Africa's 54 nations, or Asia's 49. They couldn't. We could. We did. Yes, it's American exceptionalism, but it's not without merit.
My long-winded gasbag point is that if the US split up, after an adjustment period, we'd be just as able to function as 50 independent (or, in this case, 7 amalgamated) states as we are able to turn over power once every four or eight years without a bloody coup d'etat. This scenario would happen without us devolving into chaos.
Also, Mad Max was set in Australia, not England.
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