Dare to dream

Recently I linked to an article that described an effort by a Republican in California to create a breakaway state (to be known as “Southern California”). Jim Geraghty at NRO says it will never happen, but I dunno. True, under current law, both Congress and the state legislature would have to agree, and there’s no way a Democrat-controlled state house is going to let all those taxpayers get away. But laws can be changed, and the governing authority (our old friend, the U.S. Constitution) could conceivably be amended to facilitate the creation of new states on a different basis, perhaps based on county referendums (since, according to Fareed Zakaria, we ought to have a new constitutional convention via Twitter, anyway, let’s change the clause concerning the admission of new states while we’re tuning up the original document).

I’m thinking that we could cut out a slice of, say, Oregon or Washington state – or maybe a dozen or so counties in both states– which might be named…ohhh…”Pacovia”, or something similarly euphonius. In conjunction with a rejuvenated 10th amendment (Tweet: “10th Amendment reconfirmed; and this time we really mean it!”), why, it could become another Hong Kong, a veritable laboratory of economic freedom. The residual liberal state could continue to go on its merry way, taxing and spending and regulating, staggering like a drunk hobo into the path of an oncoming freight train. The beauty of my system is that we leave the hobo to his inevitable fate, while avoiding being dragged along with him.

More Hong Kongs, fewer drunk hobos. That’s the ticket.