After the 11th year of Texas refusing to allow payment of taxes to "the feds", complaining that it refuses to fund neoliberal "Commiefornia", the Secure Our System (SOS) Bill has been signed into federal law, providing vastly more autonomy for individual states over powers of taxation, economic regulation, and foreign policy. Civil Society organizations around the country decry the law as unconstitutional, but it never faces a serious legal challenge as the council of geriatrics in the Supreme Court is 7:2 members of a pseudohistorical "traditionalist" interpretation that has already seen several powers previously held by the federal government struck down. Capital controls are gone for most of the country and the unionists are synonymous with terrorists, assassinating cops and management on a regular basis (the flip-side is getting imprisoned or summarily executed by the cops).
The system cracks to a breaking point when it is unable to resolve economic contradictions through the federalist system, which is the actual reason that major states are demanding autonomy (TX is a net receiver of funds at the time, their official excuse makes no sense). What is really desired is things like this:
The ability to regulate currency so as to regulate or displace the burgeoning black market.
The right to re-create debtor prisons and official forced labor.
The right to indefinite declarations of martial law and the corresponding suspension of labor rights.
The ability to selectively trade with other countries, choosing alignments with perceived advantage. California wants integration with the Pacific Rim despite federal protectionist policies against it and Texas wants to do its own naked attempts at imperialism focused on controlling the entire Gulf of Mexico, Mexico itself, the Caribbean, and West Africa. CA and TX fight over influence over MX and MX recognizes that it's actually stronger than both of them combined, economically, but would like to avoid getting nuked by desperate kkkrackers.
Rights to water and other resource access, including trade. Landlocked / non-border states demand pathways to ports and trade that becomes controlled by the rest of the states. Geography dictates that coastal states acquire vassal inland states, creating internal conflicts that cannot be resolved except by violence.
War will inevitably break out over economic interests and then cultural framings as the lines get drawn in the sand. Bad things happen. Country was already de facto balkanized, it just becomes official once there are winners and losers.
Cyber Xi Jinping sips a glass of wine from the 472nd floor of a skyscraper in techno-Chongqing.
After the 11th year of Texas refusing to allow payment of taxes to "the feds", complaining that it refuses to fund neoliberal "Commiefornia", the Secure Our System (SOS) Bill has been signed into federal law, providing vastly more autonomy for individual states over powers of taxation, economic regulation, and foreign policy. Civil Society organizations around the country decry the law as unconstitutional, but it never faces a serious legal challenge as the council of geriatrics in the Supreme Court is 7:2 members of a pseudohistorical "traditionalist" interpretation that has already seen several powers previously held by the federal government struck down. Capital controls are gone for most of the country and the unionists are synonymous with terrorists, assassinating cops and management on a regular basis (the flip-side is getting imprisoned or summarily executed by the cops).
The system cracks to a breaking point when it is unable to resolve economic contradictions through the federalist system, which is the actual reason that major states are demanding autonomy (TX is a net receiver of funds at the time, their official excuse makes no sense). What is really desired is things like this:
The ability to regulate currency so as to regulate or displace the burgeoning black market.
The right to re-create debtor prisons and official forced labor.
The right to indefinite declarations of martial law and the corresponding suspension of labor rights.
The ability to selectively trade with other countries, choosing alignments with perceived advantage. California wants integration with the Pacific Rim despite federal protectionist policies against it and Texas wants to do its own naked attempts at imperialism focused on controlling the entire Gulf of Mexico, Mexico itself, the Caribbean, and West Africa. CA and TX fight over influence over MX and MX recognizes that it's actually stronger than both of them combined, economically, but would like to avoid getting nuked by desperate kkkrackers.
Rights to water and other resource access, including trade. Landlocked / non-border states demand pathways to ports and trade that becomes controlled by the rest of the states. Geography dictates that coastal states acquire vassal inland states, creating internal conflicts that cannot be resolved except by violence.
War will inevitably break out over economic interests and then cultural framings as the lines get drawn in the sand. Bad things happen. Country was already de facto balkanized, it just becomes official once there are winners and losers.
Cyber Xi Jinping sips a glass of wine from the 472nd floor of a skyscraper in techno-Chongqing.
Very well described, though you forgot to mention Cyber Xi will be sitting in a hoverchair while sipping wine.
Great summary of the events that will definitely happen.