I'm torn between "Every people deserves the right to self-determination" and "Catalunya is richer than Spain, so it's the bourgeosie wanting to split off from the poors and pay less tax"
I'm torn between "Every people deserves the right to self-determination" and "Catalunya is richer than Spain, so it's the bourgeosie wanting to split off from the poors and pay less tax"
Here's the thing: this isn't really true, is it? There isn't really a universal right to "self determination", if there was we'd have to acknowledge the right of those successionist yahoos who want to true some random county in Montana into AnCapistan to legalize child marriage. We recognize people should be ruled by a government that represents them, and in examples like colonialism that right is being blatantly violated, but that doesn't mean every group of 10 or more people who are unhappy with their government has some universal right to form their own little country. If we did the whole world would be a patchwork of micro-nations the size of Rhode Island.
at minimum theyre getting rid of a monarchy, which i consider to be an improvement
But if you recognize the right of self-determination for yahoos that want child brides, that is negating the self-determination of the children that are victims. What would be the problem with a patchwork of micro-nations? These nations could form federations or whatever to complete projects that may take the resources of a large nation, or whatever reason there would be to want large nations versus micro-nations. They could form alliances that say "we don't like micro-nations that have child brides and shit like that" and they could fight against that. But then you basically have a United States sort of thing.
Do children have a universal right to self determination? We protect children from abusive and neglectful parents but we do also recognize that good parents have some authority of their children. We don't let children run away and join the circus or eat nothing but candy till they have diabetes.
Cuz it tends to create ethnic conflicts and war. Yah know like in Yugoslavia. That's literally where the term balkanization comes from. Plus few places are totally ethnically homogenous, what if my home falls in the border of one micro nation despite me preferring the government of the micro nation just to my south? What if my village is split 50-50 between two ethnic groups, which micro nation do we join?
This is how most democratic nations already work though, they divide their territory up into regions that have some local autonomy in political matters.
Yeah but those aren't a people.
Now if you ask me to define "What's a people? What's a nation?" I can't give you a cut-and-dried definition that will fit all cases. If you want to say ten people are a nation it's a clichéd old schoolground argument (parodied in Ulysses: "A nation is the same people living in the same place. —By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years.") but use common sense. Catalonia has a language and hundreds of years of history. The Kurds have a language and thousands of years of history. Ten people in a township isn't comparable.