Rothbard and Mises vs. Calhoun on the Natural Right to Secede
2023-12-20
There are many reasons to support the breaking up states into smaller pieces. This is done via secession, and acts of secession produce smaller states. All else being equal, smaller states tend to be richer and they tend to have lower taxes. They tend to exercise less power over the resident population—because it’s easier for people to escape smaller states than larger ones. Moreover, setting these tangible and practical considerations aside, secession may also be desirable simply as a matter of freeing minority populations from the control of a larger dominating majority. For much of the world in the 1990s, the benefits of secession were self-evident as more than a dozen new states seceded from the Soviet Union when it collapsed.
But do human beings have a right to secede? Classical